National Basketball Association

Allen Iverson: The Confluence of the NBA and Urban America

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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He was transcendent — sure, for his basketball skills, but in a more literal sense, he “transcended race, sports and pop culture.” For each vicious crossover on the hardwood, his entire being was a crossover off it. He was the crossover of the NBA and urban America. He was the Answer. He was Allen Iverson.

It’s impossible to understand Iverson’s basketball without talking about race and culture, and it’s impossible to talk about his race and culture without talking about basketball. To understand him, you have to see both intertwined straits. Iverson isn’t Dennis Rodman, universally reviled and begging the media to look at him as he tries to befriend Kim Jong Un. Rodman can just be waved off as pathetic. Iverson is a Shakespearian-level tragic hero, undone by his own apathy, his life crumbling around him in his twilight, far past the point of no return.

In the public eye, there is not and never was any middle ground for Iverson. As described by Bryan Graham, “to the wider public, Iverson was either a thug who hit the genetic lottery, or a misunderstood hero who couldn’t or wouldn’t outrun his past.” This was a man who pushed the NBA into its modern era, and yet even the simplest questions about him inspire the most divisive debates.

So it’s obviously time for a history lesson.

Iverson The Ankle Breaker

“He has better balance than everyone else. He’s more coordinated than everyone else. He’s faster than everyone else. He’s feistier than anyone else. He takes a superhuman pounding and keeps getting up. He’s an athletic freak. Iverson could have been an unbelievable soccer player. He could have been a world-class boxer and a remarkable defensive center fielder and base stealer. He could have picked his sport in track and field and competed for an Olympic spot. I can’t fathom how much ground he could have covered on a tennis court. We already know that he was one of the greatest high school quarterbacks in Virginia history.”

— Bill Simmons

It’s hard to describe in words just how dominant of an athlete Iverson was better than Simmons did. Seriously. This was a guy who never worked out in his professional career, sometimes (OK, a lot of the time) showed up drunk to practice, and still averaged almost 27 points per game in his career and had a turn as the league MVP. Go look up “Allen Iverson ankle breaker Antonio Daniels” on YouTube. You’ll find yourself wanting to send consolation notes to Daniels’ entire family for the way Iverson put him on the floor.

I was watching a basketball cartoon one day, with a star point guard the central antagonist of the episode. The guard, named Akashi, brings the ball nonchalantly up the court, holds his dribble and just faces up his defender. He looks at him, almost pityingly, like Mike Tyson probably would if ordered by law to sucker punch a baby. In fact, Akashi even tells the entire defense what he’s about to do. He ends his dramatic overture with one line: “I am the absolute.” And then he simply jab-steps forward, glides in and out of a crossover and gracefully lopes towards the hoop for a layup. The damage was so swift and unnerving, leaving the defenders on their knees and on the ground, with a look of terror and devastation on their face. That’s what I was reminded of when watching the Allen Iverson crossover clip. It was almost cartoonish.

That was Iverson the basketball player in a nutshell — so supremely confident and talented, fearless, no conscience. He never met a shot he didn’t like, and he was one of the few players in the NBA who could elicit cheers even at road games. He was an MVP-level player, and a probable future Hall of Famer. Just looking at box scores and stat lines, it would probably be impossible to tell Iverson apart from Kobe Bryant. But whereas Kobe was a meticulous, private, almost divined entity attempting to follow in the mold of Michael Jordan, Iverson was just the opposite — creative, expressive, candid, as you’d expect from someone who’d grown up in the clutches of NY-style street basketball. He was rated in 2008 by ESPN as one of the Top 5 shooting guards of all time, but unlike his contemporaries in that pantheon, he was the antithesis of the Jordan and Bryant style.

There was one game which I can’t stop re-watching from Iverson’s career. It was Game 1 of the 2001 NBA Finals, fittingly the culmination of Iverson’s most successful season. He got blocked by Kobe Bryant twice in his first five shot attempts. That would have sent most players into a shell. Nah. Not AI. He went on to score 48 points in the game and lead the Sixers to their only win of the series. It was the Lakers’ only playoff loss of the season. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. That would be what happened in overtime, and can only be classified as the most cold- blooded, disrespectful play in NBA history. Iverson nailed a jumper over Tyronn Lue, and Lue stumbled over and fell. Iverson then stepped over Lue. There was no stopping AI. And he knew it. Lue knew it. The Lakers knew it. It was captivating, an instance to be memorialized in the annals of NBA highlight history. For as intense competitors as we’ve heard Jordan and Kobe described, neither of them were stepping over opponents in the Finals. Heard the expression, “over my dead body?” The step-over was the personification of that adage.

You either hated him or you loved him.

Unfortunately, the “tragic” part of “tragic hero” occurs because Iverson’s legacy wasn’t bounded by the magic he invoked on a 94’x50’ hardwood court.

Iverson at Bethel

“Iverson would have a chance at a college scholarship, Bailey just knew it, a rare opportunity to lift himself and his family out of here. But there was so much work to be done, a total construction job, and the first time he had met Iverson they argued about school absences. 10 of them, the policy went, led to sports ineligibility. Bailey told Iverson he had missed 67 days of classes. Nah, Coach, the kid corrected proudly, it was only 69.”

— Kent Babb

Bethel was the high school Iverson attended in Hampton, Virginia, and it’s where the exploration of Iverson’s off-court troubles begins. He came from a broken home, with a separated father who served time in prison for most of Iverson’s childhood. He barely ever made it school before 11 AM because he had to collect money to figure out rides to and from, and that’s if he wasn’t taking care of a baby sister who suffered from seizures. In one summer, eight of Iverson’s friends were shot to death. No wonder he and his friends wanted so badly to get out of Newport Bad Newz.

Sometimes it may be easy to paint the figures in our society as black and white, heroes and villains, good and bad. But it’s never quite that simple. Iverson wasn’t simply a bad kid or a good kid. He was a complicated kid, with internal emotional turmoil. He was someone who woke up early and ironed his shirts while living with one of his coaches. He was someone who fretted over the alignment of his bowtie for prom and personally cared for his baby sister. That’s certainly not the image of AI that the rest of the world became used to and jaded with after his NBA career.

But it wasn’t all roses. Not everything was excusable. Iverson’s character issues were very real.

Call it a motivational problem. Every coach that Iverson played for had to deal with the same talented but mercurial superstar athlete. He’d sweet-talk his coach into trusting him one day, and then go missing for the next 10. He’d openly revolt on the football field, refusing to return the punts during drills. He’d randomly and aberrantly call in sick and take a health vacation. Dennis Kozlowski, the head football coach, bought Iverson his own suits on the condition that he would attend the Newport News Daily Press’ Athlete of the Year Banquet on time. Iverson arrived at 7:15 to an event that started at 6:00. He couldn’t even be bothered to feign reverence to a banquet in his honor.

Do they let him play, or do they set an example? Had he been any less talented, he would have been thrown out without so much a second glance, expunged and ejected right back into his troubles.

Things got so bad once that Mike Bailey, the coach who had invested the most in and cared the most about Iverson, hunted him down, grabbed him by the neck and threatened him, “If you mess this up, I will kill you.”

He was destined for greatness, they all said. His future, someone with his potential — he didn’t belong in Newport Bad Newz. But he was so annoyingly flighty. He was notorious for his awful work ethic. Each time someone had to put up with and make an excuse for Iverson, no one could figure out whether they were just giving a second chance to a kid due to some unique and unusual challenges or whether they were mistakenly insulating him from responsibility due to his athletic prowess. Granted, most of the time, they chose the wins. Of course they chose the wins. It was much easier to be able to smile looking at the glass trophy case which housed a plaque commemorating a 27-0 victory.

No one makes plaques honoring defeats.

That’s why it was nice having, per recruiters, one of the top two high school athletes in America. A player who was already chomping at the bit to take on Michael Jordan. Not just take him on, but leave him in the dust.

Whatever, Williams told him. Michael Evans was a solid player: Not just the best point guard in eastern Virginia but one of the best in America. Keep practicing, Allen, and maybe in a year or two you’ll…

“I wasn’t talking about no Michael Evans,” Iverson crowed.

“Who are you talking about, then?”

“Shit, I’m talking about Michael Jordan!”

No matter what, talent trumped all. Despite his frustrating and abrasive demeanor, his penchant for defiance and rebellion, Iverson was about to deliver on his promise of a state basketball championship. It seemed like Iverson was moving past his mistakes, no longer a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and shatter all the promise of such a fruitful future.

And then, in February 1993, everything went to hell in a handbasket.

The Trial of Allen Iverson

The 1993 incident was so important that ESPN made a documentary around it. Not just that, but the US Department of State chose it to be in the American Documentary showcase.

Iverson and his friends were bored and decided to go bowling. Seems innocuous enough, but Iverson’s group got into a shouting match with some other patrons at the bowling alley. To be racially blunt, the black kids got into a fight with the white crowd. Allegedly, Iverson’s group was being too raucous. Allegedly, the white patrons were spewing racial slurs. And during the melee, Iverson allegedly hit a woman in the head with a chair. Despite clear involvement in the fight by all parties, only he and his friends were arrested. They were charged with the felony count of maiming by mob. No clear video footage of the incident exists.

This is where the roots of Iverson the polarizing cultural touchstone begin to take hold. There’s a reason the Department of State felt this was one of the most important documentaries to understanding American social issues. It was the beginning of the race revelation of the most culturally polarizing athlete of his era.

Let’s remember that Virginia was very much divided along racial lines at the time. Iverson was himself a racial phenomenon. The entire trial of Iverson pitted all societal factions against each other. The blurry and murky “evidence” at hand allowed you to see what you wanted to see, interpret and judge the scenario however you wished and still defend your position.

He ultimately drew a 15 year (!) prison sentence, with 10 years suspended. However, after four months at Newport Correctional Facility, sanity prevailed, and the governor intervened to commute the sentence and the conviction was overturned on counts of insufficient evidence. The trial tore at all the open wounds between the white and black communities, and stoked a fire that really didn’t need any additional stoking. Every day, in the papers, there it was front and center — the aftermath bringing into focus Hampton’s troubles with race relations.

And that’s really how it went for most of Iverson’s life till the present day. Everything that he does reveals more about the community and society around him than it does himself. Things don’t revolve around Iverson as a physical entity; they revolve around his state of being itself. Iverson’s actions and the reactions to those actions are themselves a revealing commentary on race and culture. As brilliantly wrapped up by Scott Tobias, the most fascinating element is that “Iverson the person isn’t the subject so much as Iverson the cultural flashpoint.”

Of course, despite the Trial of Allen Iverson, Georgetown still offered him a full basketball scholarship. Wins trump all. No one makes plaques honoring defeats.