The Importance of Being Iverson - 籃球

PHILADELPHIA -- Ann Iverson, his mother, wasn't there and Tawanna Iverson,
his wife, had a doctor's appointment, and the 11-year-old son preferred
waiting for him at home, ready to tell him how lousy he'd played. His
longtime personal manager/football coach/father figure/friend of friends,
Gary Moore, was sitting courtside, next to Ed Snider, the man who'd sent him
into exile three years ago -- mutually assured destruction achieved, as the
player drifted in and out of towns like a carny working by the docks, and the
team floundered into utter, utter irrelevance. But otherwise, Allen Iverson
was pretty much alone when he came onto the Wachovia Center court Monday,
knelt and kissed the hardwood, just as he had when he'd worn the uniform of
the Denver Nuggets in 2008 and come back to town.

Closure.

Real closure.

He was back in the home white of the Philadelphia 76ers, 34 years old and not
sure if this is going to be his last year or not in the NBA. If it is, he can
live with it, because the ending, now, makes sense.

Allen Iverson in Memphis Grizzlies Blue didn't make sense.

"Words can't describe it," Iverson said after the 76ers ran out of gas in the
fourth quarter Monday and dropped a 93-83 game to the Nuggets, Philadelphia's
10th straight loss. "I've been to other cities, played in Denver, and the
people embraced me. I had fans there. I had a good life there. But it will
never be, for me and my career, like this place."

This is not about basketball -- well, not just about basketball. Iverson will
no more will the 76ers to the playoffs than elephants will tap dance, because
he isn't a kid anymore and he can't summon those kinds of nights anymore,
when he shot and shot and shot the ball until his team won, and there were
four other guys on the court that were perfectly willing to watch him while
they played defense and rebounded. These Sixers have an All-Star worthy
player in Andre Iguodala, and an $80 million investment in Elton Brand, and
whatever Philadelphia does this season will be determined by those two more
than anyone. (Iguodala is also dressing in Iverson's old locker, the biggest
one, nearest the hallway by the coach's office. "He hasn't offered anything
yet," Iguodala said before tipoff, "but everything is up for negotation.
Shoot, it's Christmas.")
iverson_fans_300.jpg
David Dow/NBAE via Getty Images

But Iverson has never been just about basketball.

This is the part I want to get right. I hope I do.

Allen Iverson is just as important to the history of this league as Michael
Jordan and Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson and
Wilt Chamberlain.

He was the symbol of this league for almost a decade, the engine that drove
it after Jordan retired for good (we thought) in Chicago. That wasn't always
positive, and it wasn't always aesthetically pleasing to the hoops purist,
because there were a lot of 9 for 31s in the deal. But it was real, and that
deserves your respect. A whole generation of new jacks, from Brandon Jennings
to Ty Lawson -- the Nuggets rookie that blew by Iverson at will in the second
half ("me, stay in front of him?," Iverson said afterward. "That kid is the
fastest guy in the league") -- idolized number 3 growing up. The guy with the
tats and the braids and the crossover, who got this league from the Jordan
Era to the LeBron Era, all 160 pounds of him.

That's the guy whose jersey was consistently the biggest seller of them all,
whose trips abroad were scenes of chaos, the person for whom everyone would
wait when he was, again, late for something (as he was Monday night, not
arriving for the 7 p.m. tipoff until just before 6). No one of this
generation -- not LeBron, not Kobe, not D Wade -- put butts in seats like
Allen Iverson. Twenty thousand came out to see him Monday, the first sellout
of the season -- not the 5-15 team whose uniform he wore, not Iguodala, not
Brand, not Eddie Jordan, not Carmelo Anthony or Chauncey Billups. Him.

They wore their T-shirts and held up their homemade signs (and they were
mostly white, the not-so-secret secret of Iverson's appeal; you don't move as
many shoes and jerseys as he has over the last 15 years by just selling in
the 'hood), and Snider was sick as a dog, but damned if he wasn't going to be
on hand for this, a night in the dead of winter when his team mattered in
town again. The Flyers stink this year and the Phillies are beloved (but
looking for still more starting pitching), and the Eagles are rounding into
playoff shape, but there's no way that Donovan McNabb --one of a half-dozen
or so Eagles in attendance Monday -- has the impact in this town that Iverson
does, even now.

There's a reason Patti LaBelle offered to sing the anthem in exchange for two
tickets -- although she ultimately passed, unable to get out of a prior
engagement. There's a reason Cuttino Mobley materialized on the front row.
There's a reason you couldn't hear the PA guy after he said, "a six-foot
guard, from Georgetown, number 3," as the crowd roared and loosed itself,
Iverson introduced next to last, leaving poor Iguodala to pick up the crumbs
of dying applause.

David Letterman has this great saying about his own late father: when he came
into a room, the lamps would rattle. That's Iverson.

"He represents the city of Philadelphia to a T -- hard working, chip on his
shoulder," said Iverson's once and current teammate, Willie Green.

Green was here when Iverson was at the top of his game, when the hotels would
swell as the team's bus pulled up, as the restaurants would make way and
clear tables out of the air for the team to eat. Rock star treatment, Green
said, and not enviously, because he knew, and knows, what Iverson has meant
and done, both locally and nationally, for the game.

"I always say, there are superstars, and there are megastars," Green said.
"He's a megastar."

Of course Iverson made mistakes by the carload. He was an individual
performer in a team sport -- not selfish, but very hard to play with. Only a
few NBA players could swallow their own ambitions that long. He didn't make
many of his teammates that much better with his presence. His practice
habits...well, you know. He stayed out too late too many nights, and he could
be loud and profane -- to management, to coaches -- who didn't give him his
way. I'm not saying he was the best player. I'm saying he was the show, the
reason you tuned in, the reason you stayed and watched.

But in recent years, he's gone out of his way to acknowledge that he had
rough patches. The best I've ever seen him was that first time back, when he
was with Denver, when he spoke the media before the game and said he was to
blame for him not being in Philly any more. He wasn't mad that night; he was
wistful, like an adult looking back on his life, aware of the mistakes he
made, and saddened by them. If he hadn't given the Sixers reasons galore to
get rid of him, he said then, he could have finished his career here.

Now, he just might.

"These people here, they watched me become who I am," Iverson said Monday.
"They watched me go through my ups and downs. They watched me go through my
trendsetting stage. People don't forget that. Just like I wouldn't forget the
impact that Michael Jordan had on me. I would never forget that. It would
never go nowhere. I know who made me want to play basketball. Just like the
song, 'I want to be like Mike'? I was one of those guys that wanted to be
like Mike. It never goes away. When Mike came back, I was ecstatic about it."

I was overjoyed last year, at All-Star, when Iverson showed up without
braids, his hair cut like it was when he was a teenager playing for John
Thompson at Georgetown. This isn't a hair argument; I know the symbolism of
braids and why people wore their hair in braids, I know, I know. But my daddy
used to always tell me you don't see any old junkies for a reason, and I
think you don't see men closer to their 40s than their 20s wearing braids for
a reason. Time requires all of us to make accomodations with life.

But that's my worldview. Not his.

He was back in braids Monday night, and wearing the home white, and the
Wachovia Center was packed to bursting, and the crowd was roaring, and if it
wasn't because the fans believed the Sixers were going to win, or going
anywhere, for that matter, or that Allen Iverson has a lot left in the tank,
and even if they knew this was the beginning of the end, the end of his era,
it would still do.


http://www.nba.com/2009/news/features/david_aldridge/12/07/iverson.returns/index.html


文中我覺得最重要的一句話就是:

Twenty thousand came out to see him Monday, the first sellout of the season
-- not the 5-15 team whose uniform he wore, not Iguodala, not Brand, not
Eddie Jordan, not Carmelo Anthony or Chauncey Billups. Him.

不管AI表現怎麼樣，他的熱情和努力大家都是知道的，
大家也是衝著他來看球的!
這一點沒人可以取代，AI就是AI。

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