In the year 2000, the Bulls were coming off an Eastern Conference worst 17-65 record and were unable to attract any of that offseason's premier free agents. Clearly, they were no good and weren't going to be any good for a long time.
I was in eighth grade an used to a winning basketball team. I grew up with Championships and really didn't appreciate how difficult they were to come by. I decided to invest my rooting interest into Allen Iverson and the 76ers that year. It helped that the 76ers were Championship contenders, but more importantly, Iverson's game was the most intriguing of anyone in the NBA at the time.
He was usually the smallest player on the floor, yet was the most athletic. He was a poor outside shooter, yet led the league in scoring five times. He may have been the most inefficient player of his era, and also one of the greatest. Now that's saying something.
In eighth grade we didn't speak of inefficiency. We preferred a more scathing term: "ball hog." Allen Iverson was a ball hog. I heard that for the entire 20-minute lunch period everytime I wore my Iverson jersey. I began to think my classmates were more enraged with Iverson attempting 30 shots a game than anything else. It didn't matter whether he made 8 or 17 of them. Thirty shots was too many, especially for someone as disliked as Iverson.
His somewhat deserved reputation as a chucker is one of the only aspects about his game people remember. He's more known for one/some or all of the following: cornrows, tattoos, being the main target of the NBA dress code, a high school bowling alley brawl, refusing to accept a bench role towards the end of his career, a homophobic rap song, and of course, "PRACTICE, WE TALKIN' ABOUT PRACTICE, NOT A GAME, NOT A GAME, NOT A GAME, BUT PRACTICE."
Translation: thug, trouble-maker, selfish, bigot, and lazy.
If those are lenses which you choose to view Iverson then that's on you. Many have tried to defend him and are usually unsuccessful because he is such a polarizing figure. If you have an opinion on Allen Iverson, you most likely aren't changing it now.
The point of this post was not to reflect on Iverson's basketball legacy or the legitimacy of the negativity surrounding him. I simply wanted to relate how I remember him, and one image sticks out above the rest.
Game 7 in Philadelphia of the Eastern Conference Finals. The Sixers defeated the Bucks 108-91 to advance to the 2001 NBA Finals. If someone asked me to show them a video that summed up Allen Iverson I wouldn't show them the infamous "Practice" video, or the overrated 1996 Jordan crossover, or one of his 11 career 50-point games. I'd show them Game 7, or as I call it, the perfect actualization of an Iverson-led team.
Iverson poured in 44 points on 17 of 33 shooting, including 4 of 6 from behind the arc. He was only a career 42 percent shooter, 31 percent from three, yet made a variety of difficult outside shots that game. He took is customary plus 30 attempts, but did so efficiently.
In my opinion, the best description of Iverson's game was written by FreeDarko founding member Bethlehem Shoals:
No player before or since has so sincerely believed in one-on-one basketball as a means to victory, imagining it fully while others had been unwittingly dragged into it by their egos. Iverson wanted the ball in his hands until the last possible second and seemed resistant to the idea that anyone else on his team could implement his plan for a possession.
The 2001 76ers were structured around allowing Iverson to take full control of the offense. Every other player fulfilled their role, which rarely included any input on the offensive end. Aaron McKie guarded the bigger guard, in this case Ray Allen, and fed Iverson the ball coming off screens. McKie finished with 13 assists. Tyrone Hill crashed the boards and scored garbage points. He finished with 11 and 10. Dikembe Mutombo was the heart and soul of the Sixers defense. He owned the paint, grabbed rebounds at will and rejected shots. Mutombo had the game of his life: 23 points, 19 rebounds, and 7 blocks. If you were to draw up a perfect game for a Iverson-led team, this would be it.
With a 18 point lead and just under 40 seconds left, Sixers coach Larry Brown took Iverson out:
Iverson ran across the court with his hand to his ear, imploring the crowd to raise their decibel level. That's the image I will always remember. At that moment, Iverson was embraced by his teammates, coaches, and the basketball world. A player who was never supposed to sustain any level of team success finally did. The Sixers would go on to shock the Lakers in Game 1 of the Finals, Los Angeles' only loss of the playoffs, but Iverson's Game 7 exit will always be the most memorable moment of his career for me.
When I hear things nowadays that Iverson is broke, gambled away all his money, and watching the All-Star Game alone at the bar, none of it surprises me. People revel in the supposed downfall of former athletes, especially controversial ones like Iverson.
It just seems wrong that Iverson is watching an All-Star Game. He surely would have been voted in again this year. I watched ten minutes of his inaugural game in Turkey and he looked like another average player, trying to make a living playing overseas. I had to turn the game off -- it was that bad.
Allen Iverson's NBA career is over but in those who could appreciate his unorthodox approach to the game, he'll live on. Iverson's impact may get tossed aside, but like my jersey gathering dust, it will always be there -- and that's the important thing.
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