smallchou.com/blog

My Allen Iverson Experience

in december of 1997, i went on a long weekend trip with the varsity basketball team to lake oswego, oregon. as a frosh-soph player, i was excited to join the upperclassmen on a tournament trip. it was a cool experience because, among other things, i got to attend my first nba game.

now for anyone that doesn’t know, nba players are big. ENORMOUS. and you think you understand that, but you really can’t until you see them up close. their scale is on another level.

we got to the rose garden in portland early, to watch a mid-season tilt between the trailblazers (i believe rod strickland was the point guard at the time) and the philadelphia 76ers. since we were there well before tip-off, a bunch of us sat down in the lower level seats, watching the pre-game shootaround of the players. i remember marveling at three things:

1. the size. these guys were absurd
   
2. jim jackson’s arms. he was the only player shooting around with his jersey on, so his guns were on full display. they looked like they belonged in a friggin comic book.
   
3. allen iverson’s small size amongst the trees. looked among the other players. listed at 6’0″, the second-year player looked more like 4’1″ stick figure next to guys like jackson

once the game started, we moved up to our upper level seats, where the players started looking less like giants and more like ants. it was up there that a fourth item struck me:

allen iverson was FAST. absurdly fast. you know in super mario brothers when you would pick up the star and suddenly zoom around, too fast for everything else? that was allen iverson. in a league full of freakish physical specimen, AI made them all look slow. that was my one and only first-hand AI experience.

The Phenomenon

the thing is that back then, in the time since, and even today, so many sportswriters misunderstand the allen iverson phenomenon. and yes, it isn’t crazy to call him a phenomenon. bill simmons touched on it a bit today, but the gist is this: allen iverson is one of the most loved nba players ever, as well he should be. for almost any nba fan in my generation, allen iverson is usually high on the list of favorite players.

yes, he has some attitude, but he’s tiny, unique in his athleticism, resilient, and he plays HARD. perhaps most of all, he is perceived as being real, where so many other players are looked at as being corporate (see: bryant, kobe) or fake.

sportswriters and the media will often try to push fans to fuse with their perspectives. but AI was the rare player who rubbed the media wrong and was revered even more for doing so. i don’t think the majority of sportswriters have ever understood his appeal. he has street credibility in urban areas that most players do not, and that translates into reverence in the suburbs. since he stepped into the nba he has always been one of the league’s premier stars, despite rarely getting the face time of other top players. he has the love that the nba wishes kobe could get.

The Trade

so today, AI is sitting on the trade block. on monday after basketball, i remarked to tim that i wouldn’t be surprised if AI sat out two months while they tried to move him. the sixers almost certainly won’t get fair value for him (on the court and in the ticket office) because they have no leverage at this point of the season, but their hand has been forced.

what was most remarkable was the surprise by media in how many teams have interest in AI. i saw an espn personality openly remark that he didn’t think there were too many teams that would be interested, at which point an nba analyst (a former player) stopped him cold and told him that was nonsense. such is the phenomenon of allen iverson. everyone can see his value except for the old media types, who just see off-the-court incidents and press conferences about “practice”. it’s a strange phenomenon.

wherever he lands, i hope that it’s with a contender, because watching him in the playoffs is always an experience. then i hope he retires in a few years, disappearing from history except for in the minds of people who actually appreciated him…

Blogged with Flock