These two columns, by NBA Insiders Dave D’Alessandro and Sean Deveney, first appeared less than a year apart in The Sporting News, and reflect the mercurial nature of Philadelphia icon Allen Iverson. Shortly before D’Alessandro’s column, Iverson was voted TSN’s 2000-01 NBA Player of the Year by his peers and chosen the league MVP. Almost a year to the day after that honor, Iverson was in the middle of a(nother) tete-a-tete with Sixers coach Larry Brown about … PRACTICE.
The Sporting News, June 18, 2001
Iverson hasn’t changed; he has changed us
By Dave D’Alessandro
People say Allen Iverson has changed, but I’m still trying to find the facts that support this widespread perception.
Perhaps they like his game the more they see it, and they’re more willing to accept the fact their friends and kids are cheering for him, but that doesn't matter much to Iverson himself.
"I don't care," he says. "All I care about is what my family feels about me, my friends, teammates, people I care about and know they care about me. Everybody else. I just don't care about them. I wish them well and God bless them, but I don't have time to think about people that don't give a damn about Allen Iverson.”
That doesn't sound as though he has changed.
Iverson turned 26 last week, a significant milepost in his life, not only because he had friends who never reached this age. but because his mom always told him that you become a man at 25. It was an eventful year, no doubt about it: He decided he was tired of being branded as unprofessional, and the steps he took to remove that label represent a change. But he still had his coach close to quitting in December, and he also refused to yield to other forms of convention, like the time he put out a CD that bashed gays and women.
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“Nothing easy about being Allen Iverson. where everybody is looking at your every move, criticizing you for just saying a curse word when you get mad." he says. "(You) feel like you're some type of villain. The smallest man on the court, but the biggest villain in life."
And still the world's smallest minority — a gangsta rapper with a 401(k) plan. Still with the persecution complex.
That doesn't sound like he has changed.
It always is neat to see him carrying his kids up to the postgame podium these days, because the kids are adorable. And, sure, we all get gooey over a father's affection for his children, and maybe this shows a softer side of Allen — the one years removed from the bowling alley melee, the jail sentence and the gun and marijuana arrests. You think his life and priorities are in order, and then you consult Sixers president Pat Croce.
"I worry about him all the time,” Croce says. "All the time, when he's not in our sanctum or where I can see him."
Interesting. That doesn't sound like he has changed.
On the court, of course, there never has been anything quite like Iverson. He was the league's MVP this year, but he really isn't so much better than he was a year ago. Maybe we just notice him more now because the Philadelphia story is the most compelling of the sports year, or maybe he's just the embodiment of an old John Madden line, the one about how winning is a great deodorant.
That's an easy explanation for the clay-brained among us, who watch slack-jawed as he pinballs his way through the postseason, doing things we often equate with courage. To wit: Allen gets knocked down; Allen gets up and scores. Allen gets flattened with an elbow to the throat in the first quarter; Allen gets up and punishes his assailants with 26 points in the fourth quarter. Allen get his teeth knocked in; Allen guzzles his own blood and goes on. We watch him get hit, hacked, smashed, clobbered, folded, spindled and mutilated, and he always finds the strength to get back up.
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"I don't play with my size," he says. "I play with my heart, and I think I have one of the biggest hearts in this league."
But there's nothing new there, really. He has played this way since grade school. He is utterly fearless, though he usually dismisses that with "it's only basketball." Surely, it's more than that. He plays the game as though his life depends on it.
For almost five years, we only had seen a homegrown kid so brutalized by life that he seemed to have no other feeling but anger. It was what made him so hard. It wasn't so much that he was bad, it was that good and bad seemed meaningless to him, because everything had been taken from him. All that remained was rage, and that rage sustained him, energizing that place intended for his soul.
For almost five years, the fury that governed his life and tailored his game was something we had come to fear.
Now it's something everyone seems so willing to embrace. The networks love him. He is a pop-culture icon.
We'll ask it again: Has Allen Iverson really changed?
Hardly. He's the same guy. A lot more punctual when it comes to job responsibilities, perhaps, but the same guy. It's the rest of us who have changed. We have come to realize that a person's drive and passion are the things that define him, and we have learned to overcome our stupid personal prejudices — recognizing that there was another reality buried beneath all the cornrows. tattoos, chains and hip-hop attire.
Allen Iverson did that for us. And we should be grateful.
Ask Larry Brown: "Maybe I didn't give it enough thought or time to understand what this kid's about," he says. "That's been the neatest thing about my relationship with him. He doesn't always do it the way I would expect or sometimes like. But I know where his heart is."
If he can admit it, so can the rest of us. Better late than never.
The Sporting News, May 20 2002
There's no easy Answer to 76ers’ problems
By Sean Deveney
More than the Tasmanian Devil-drives to the baskets, the impossible off-balance shots and the many pockets deftly picked, what stands out most for me about Allen Iverson is the game he had against the Heat back in March 2000. The box score line went something like this: zero points, zero rebounds, zero shots attempted.
Classic Iverson, who sat out that night in Miami because he had better things to do. He skipped a shootaround that morning and was suspended from the game, but he was not to blame. See, the 76ers were off the previous night, and Iverson had spare time, and Miami is so warm, and the clubs are such fun and, and time sure flies … Who could be expected to go to a shootaround in the face of such distraction? "You think I'm going to come to Miami after being in freezing Philadelphia and not go out?" Iverson asked at the time.
Shudder to think of it!
We ought to know by now that this is Allen Iverson. The only surprising thing to come out of his fiasco of a news conference last week was he flaunted his personality in one sitting, rather than in bits and pieces. There he was, the NBA's chief knucklehead regaling the world with his knuckleheadedness, showing his utter disrespect for everyone in the room, inviting the persecution on which he thrives, speaking of practice as though he were a third-grader discussing Brussels sprouts and proving that in six years in the league and nearly 27 years on the planet, he has learned little.
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There are promises, both from Iverson and coach Larry Brown, that the two will work out their differences, a notion which must draw a smirk from anyone who follows the Sixers. Work out their differences? Now? Better luck getting Sharon and Arafat to sit down for a game of cribbage. Just two weeks after that Miami episode, Iverson said, "It's a growing process. I'm going to learn; he's going to learn." TWO years later, Iverson still is dodging practice.
The simplistic view is there are just two options for the Sixers: Either Brown goes or Iverson goes. But neither is going to happen. Both are tremendously talented, and both have contracts that run three more years. Brown could walk out of Philadelphia and take over, say, the Nuggets, but he is not inclined to do so. Besides, if the Sixers allow Brown to go, what evidence do they have that the Iverson situation would be better with someone else at the helm?
The Sixers would have little trouble finding a taker in a trade for Iverson, but who would they get in return? After spending the last six years piecing together a roster full of cogs to complement Iverson, it would not be wise to rip out the main gear and start over.
The Sixers are stuck with the Brown-Iverson combo. The situation is not going to change, so Philadelphia's only hope is to mask it. What management must do is look at how it got to this point, how, in less than a year, the team went from The Finals to first-round elimination and the embarrassing Brown-Iverson dueling news conferences. You're not going to change Brown and Iverson, but loggerheads are easily overlooked when winning is involved.
The hopes of winning are faint, though. The pieces around Iverson just don't fit. Center Dikembe Mutombo is a presence in the middle, but he handles the ball as though he were wearing mittens and, going on age 36, cannot keep up with the power forwards who masquerade as centers in the East. Power forward Derrick Coleman was effective when he was healthy, but he never has been healthy for an entire season and missed 24 games this year.
Point guard Eric Snow struggled with injuries (again), missing 21 games, and though he has shown he capably can run the offense, he is not the long-range threat the team needs desperately. Ditto backcourt reserve Aaron McKie. The Sixers attempted a measly 715 3-pointers and made a league-worst 29.9 percent of them.
The aforementioned five players will serve as the Sixers' core next season, the same five gimpy players who were the core this season. Not a good start. At his news conference, Brown reiterated what he has said all year: "You try to think if those guys are healthy, who would we have been?" But Brown and general manager Billy King put this team together, and they had to know in advance that with these guys, the likelihood of injuries being a problem was high. As excuses go, that one is irrelevant.
Outside of those five, the Sixers have rookies Speedy Claxton and Samuel Dalembert under contract for next season, and those seven players will combine to make about $49 million. The team will have as many as eight roster spots to fill, and, considering that the NBA's financial picture next year will be similar to this year's, only about $5 million in cap space before the luxury tax becomes a threat to fill them. It will be difficult to find the kind of slashing small forward and long-range gunner this team needs with that kind of money.
"One thing that people have to understand is it's sports," King said at his news conference. "It doesn't happen overnight. We can say that we want that, and this can help us, but it's a process. You evaluate it, look at it and see. Coach and I are on the same page. We know what we need and where our shortcomings are coming … But it's not going to be fixed today or tomorrow."
It probably won't be fixed next year, either, which puts the Sixers in a tenuous position — more of the same from the players on the court, which means more of the same from their star player off it.