As many of you already know, I was born and raised near Philadelphia and from the time I could crawl I was obsessed with basketball. We had a court out in the backyard where I would tirelessly throw up shot after shot after shot in kindergarden even though I could barely reach the rim.
Once I learned to read, I was naturally drawn to the mostly silly books about the NBA stars of the day, Larry, Michael, Magic, Charles…The last one particularly excited me because Barkley played for my beloved 76ers. During grandparents day in first grade, the school was having a book fair and my Grandpa Eddie told me he would buy me one book so long as I promised to read it. There were pretty small informal biographies available for both Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, I had one of the toughest decisions of my young life over whose to get with my grandpa’s generosity. Magic and Larry may have thought their most famous finals moments were made at the Garden and Forum in 1984, but actually it was the square-off in my head 5 years later over who to read about first.
Magic won and I read things I still remember about how he would make a ball of socks and play sockball with brothers on rainy days so that he never missed a day of basketball, or about how when he was 11 or 12 he would never let a ball out of his hands, he just liked the feel and smell. I followed that for most of my young years. Outside of school, I could only be found with a basketball.
I could tell stories about childhood basketball and reading silly biographies of NBA stars for hour’s, the best of the lot was Barkley’s which I guess is no shock now, I was biased back then because my dad had a dislike for Barkley since he had recently spit on a young female fan. Anyway, my point is, I was legitimately obsessed with basketball, and sometime around the age of 13 or 14 I realized that while I could play a bit, the NBA was not in my future and I had to accept that. This didn’t lower my enthusiasm for my beloved Sixers who I continued to watch intently through the god-awful post Chuck pre AI years. I’m going to talk about their roster from memory so it is possible I will make a few mistakes.
For a disgruntled Charles, the Sixers got Jeff Hornecek, Andrew Lang and Tim Perry from the Phoenix Suns. The team now starred Hornecek (a very sharp shooting guard who didn’t do much else), Clarence Weatherspoon (and undersized recent lottery pick how was doing ok but would never be a team leader), Hersey Hawkins (A smooth classy guard, the hero of my young life, still not really a team star, but I did flip when he autographed my shoe at sixers camp, I still have that shoe…) and an eclectic mix of odd physical specimens like armen gilliam, manute bol, tim perry and eddie lee wilkens…If there were a god he certainly made these aberrant people for something, but it just wasnt to help the sixers win. They landed the number 2 overall pick in the lottery, a savior was on the way!! They picked Manute Bol lookalike Shawn Bradley, the only problem was, Manute could play more! Even at the time this was not the conventional pick in the 1993 draft, I was 10 and I knew that, they passed over Penny, Mashburn, Vin Baker, Allan Houston and a host of other good (though not great players)…another dreadful year….then we land the 6th pick in a draft that the pundits say has 5 players in it, Glenn Robinson, Jason Kidd, Grant Hill, Donyell Marshall, Juwan Howard. Oh well, at least we would get local guy Eddie Jones who impressed everyone in workouts….BUT NO, they take Sharone Wright, you don’t even want me to tell you about him…another terrible year….We landed another top 3 pick in 1995, which was truly an unbelievable draft class. The misfortune for the sixers, was getting LUCKY this year in the draft lottery, had they picked 4 or 5, they would have been blessed with Rasheed Wallace, or even better, Kevin Garnett!! a talent to build around, the Sixers got Jerry Stackhouse who they tried like hell to market like batman even though at best he is a very tiny Robin or a very big version of Alfred. To be fair, he was the consensus pick and the first pick of the draft, Joe Smith was a far bigger bust….another terrible year…1996 arrives and the sixers win the number 1 pick!!!! This draft has to be up there as one of the deepest drafts in NBA history but the ONLY choice at the time was Iverson. Right now there are many of the players on that list who are still in the league and flourishing. Ray Allen, Peja, Steve Nash, Jermaine O’Neal and my fellow Philly Mainliner, Kobe Bryant. Despite all of these talents, I do not regret the pick of Iverson for a second, and he is the only pick in my history with them aside from maybe Todd McCullough who i can say that about.
Iverson very naturally played the Batman role that Stackhouse couldn’t stomach. He instantly electrified crowds his first games in the NBA, he dropped staggering numbers in the most acrobatic of ways. He was shorter than I would be in only a few years and yet he was dominating this league of 7 foot behemoths. He played MJ that year and through a switch, Jordan ended up on Iverson, AI pulled out his trademark crossover dribble and drilled a shot over Jordan on the way to the Sixers beating the most dominant team of the generation. He made the greatest player of all time look downright silly in that moment, I was there for it and will never forget it.
As Iverson grew, there were growing pains, and finding the right supporting pieces was not always easy, the two most important turned out not to be players at all, they were Sixers new president Pat Croce and coach Larry Brown. These two harnessed Iverson and gave him a controlling authority he could respect. They set a team up around him where everyone cared only about winning. In 2000-2001 the results showed. The Sixers starting lineup that took them to a 41 and 14 start in which they took the league by storm. The lineup was AI, Eric Snow, George Lynch, Tyrone Hill and Theo Ratliff with Aaron Mckie as a 6th man. at the 41-14 mark, electric shot blocker Ratliff got hurt and they had to trade him to give themselves a chance at a title that year. They acquired an aging Dikembe Mutumbo to fill the middle.
That year Iverson led the Sixers to the finals in playoffs that included many of the best performances I have ever seen by one player. Iverson matched up every night against Reggie Miller, Vince Carter, Ray Allen, Kobe Bryant and he held his own the whole way. They won nail-biting decisive game 7s against the Raptors and the Bucks and even managed to take game 1 from the Lakers who had been 11 and 0 thus far in the playoffs. They came up short after that, but really that Kobe-Shaq juggernaut was just unfair, the fact that we competed with 5′10 Iverson and his host of role player at best sidekicks was incredible.
I was a senior in High School this year and I delighted in every minute of it. I had senior project at my cousin’s Law Office during the day in the spring, and after we’d hang out for awhile, I would drive right to the stadium many nights to spend about 3 hours just to walk around the building, feel the energy and the pre playoff excitement when AI was in the house. He was a tenacious competitor in every sense of the word. If I was in a fight to the death and could choose Iverson or Kobe, Kobe is way bigger, but you know who my choice would be. AI was so unstoppable despite his tiny stature that he spoke even more to a city like Philly that idolizes Rocky and Rudy, we liked the little guy and we had the littlest guy around getting knocked down hard many times a night but getting back up for us to continue going at it. There was never a player that energized Philly in the way that AI did. The current Phillies teams do, but no one of their players could do it. Iverson owend the city and as far as I was concerned, he deserved it, he gave me many of the highlights of my senior year capped off by him famously high stepping over tyronn lue after icing gambe 1 of the nba finals.
My dad and I went to half of the games that season, he wasn’t prone to showing much emotion, but sometimes Iverson would do things and he wouldn’t just smile, he would cheer. We spent years watching The spoon and the hammer (Weatherspoon and Gilliam) and now we were watching something truly special, he knew it was time to cheer.
That is how I know a player is special, my best, most precious family memories, involve the athlete himself doing something spectacular (a standard Iverson could hit many times per game). If I had 3.5 million dollars, I’d pay it to Iverson now to go to sixers games with me and laugh at the people that they have tried to replace him with. During these periods of mediocre basketball I would do anything to have Allen Iverson back.
We all know what is becoming of him now, he can’t accept a diminished role and he has bounced from team to team as a malcontent on all of them. He will probably retire soon. He may go broke after that, he is extraordinarily generous with those close to him. None of this would change my opinion of him. He added so much to my childhood that no other athlete, (even a good solid team player) ever did. Allen, if you are reading this, let’s go to a Sixers Grizzlies game together and laugh at the turnovers, the missed shots and the sixers core of guys making over 10 million per year (Brand, Dalembert, Iguodala) who will not be making any memories worth 10 cents for the families of Philadelphia.
