Allen Iverson retired today, and a few years ago, that would have been a huge deal to me and all of the other sports fans in the country. Remembering Iverson at Georgetown or in that stellar rookie year with the Seventy-Sixers or his ephemeral surge in the 2000 NBA Finals is remembering who you were at the time. Allowing yourself to root for Allen Iverson was to punch your card to coolness in the last fifteen years, in the same way it was cool to root for any rebel in any rebellious era. Those individuals exhibit the control of controlling the unknown, controlling the mystery and intrigue of a hard life and a stubborn mentality. But Allen Iverson has never been a player of control, and when given the verbal spotlight, his honesty is almost always an insight into how little control he has over himself and his life. For that, I've learned to have little patience for Allen Iverson and athletes like him.
Don't confuse it, I think that a young black man covered in tattoos can be whatever he wants in America if he has both the skill and mental capacity. Iverson is a rare display of skill and quickness that in the ways players like Bernard King and Dwayne Wade could use his skill set to give the NBA a unique and unstoppable game. But unstoppable doesn't always win, and neither did Iverson, but not because he wasn't good or deserving. Bruce Bowen has three more NBA titles than Allen Iverson because he never felt the need to appeal to a wholly childish fan-base by arguing the importance of practice or weight-training. Iverson felt it necessary to joke about the two during his rift with Larry Brown, and no one had the courage at the time to say, "hey Allen, maybe if you went to practice more often, you, the coach and the bunch of guys paid to sit around and watch you every night might be on the same page, and if you did some weight training, you might be able to get your one hundred and sixty-pound frame through a full season."
Iverson never understood these sorts of complicated, grown-up athlete ideas, and if he did personally, he was intent on showing through his self-created persona that these things didn't matter to him, and as an adult, I now know why so many parents cringed when they saw their young children practicing the Iverson carryover dribble at their bedroom mirrors. For so long I've wanted Allen Iverson to be more of a professional, and that has little to do with hair cuts and tattoos. It's easy to like players with dynamic skill sets, and immediately, the excitement generated from athletes like Jay Cutler, Joba Chamberlain, Derrick Rose, Vince Young, Michael Beasley, Terrell Owens and others comes to mind. Not all of these athletes though, are typically selfish. What they are, is undisciplined, and that lack of discipline resonates everywhere, from missed free throws, to bad reality shows, to depression, it shows. They are even more undisciplined in posture and body language, and with some of these players in serious leadership roles-point guards and quarterbacks especially-these players play their teams into games with their skill, and play their teams out of games with a lack of control.
Their biggest problem though, as has been Iverson's, is that they're no longer interested in their league if a player like them is no longer an asset. Iverson has failed to realize for many years that his teams can't really win because like all other leagues in professional sports, the NBA changes. An undersized ball-demanding former point guard and now shooting guard simply isn't a hot commodity in the NBA and never was. He had a special skill set for his size, and he still does. At one time, he was an unpredictable and unstoppable weapon in the professional game. Now, teams in the NBA need as much ball-flow as a collegiate team, and the stagnant offenses of the nineties are gone. Mature and disciplined players in all sports change their games to suit the league's style. It's why Kobe Bryant has chosen so many styles of play in his career, he's been making yearly adjustments to the changes in the league. I firmly believe that if players like Jason Terry or Moe Williams were replaced with Allen Iverson, that the Mavericks and the Cavaliers would be the favorites in their respective conferences. But Iverson would ignorantly admit that he'd be looking for Dirk Nowitzki's or Lebron James' shots, and it sickens me to know that a future hall-of-famer who has never won a championship would feel that way.
Even if an athlete felt that way, common sense should tell them to be quiet to everyone about it, the way when you get in an argument with your wife and you pull a gun, it stays your business. The world doesn't have to know what type of people these athletes are, and it seems to me that the ones obsessed with projecting their personalities onto us, are far less mature than those who don't, as players and as people. I'm very glad that I don't know about Tim Duncan or Albert Pujols' love lives, and I commend athletes like Alex Rodriguez and Dirk Nowitzki for remaining professional during times of real female turmoil in their personal lives (although Rodriguez, the dramatic diva sometimes likes to call the public's attention to his loins with a bullhorn). For the most part, athletes who desire attention need to do more to remain at the highest level just to play distractions out of their heads, but players like Iverson have always brought on distractions and disorder. He was seen as the bad influence on the 2004 Olympic basketball team, and was black-balled from the 2008 team by Jerry Colangelo early in the selections at a time when he was still a very relevant player in the NBA, just as he and his style of play have been proven to be an irrelevant side-show today and he can't find a perfect fit in the NBA.
I still have a deep love for super-stardom, improvisation, and uncanny abilities in sports, but the direct sacrifice of intelligence for those things in sports is something that deeply annoys me, and it's why YMCA's, recreational leagues, Semi-pro leagues and batting cages all over the country are full of guys who well all know can be used at the next level. The reality is though, that professional leagues are looking for professional people, and if they can't train a great athlete to be a professional athlete, then that athlete never really stays around for too long.
Don't confuse it, I think that a young black man covered in tattoos can be whatever he wants in America if he has both the skill and mental capacity. Iverson is a rare display of skill and quickness that in the ways players like Bernard King and Dwayne Wade could use his skill set to give the NBA a unique and unstoppable game. But unstoppable doesn't always win, and neither did Iverson, but not because he wasn't good or deserving. Bruce Bowen has three more NBA titles than Allen Iverson because he never felt the need to appeal to a wholly childish fan-base by arguing the importance of practice or weight-training. Iverson felt it necessary to joke about the two during his rift with Larry Brown, and no one had the courage at the time to say, "hey Allen, maybe if you went to practice more often, you, the coach and the bunch of guys paid to sit around and watch you every night might be on the same page, and if you did some weight training, you might be able to get your one hundred and sixty-pound frame through a full season."
Iverson never understood these sorts of complicated, grown-up athlete ideas, and if he did personally, he was intent on showing through his self-created persona that these things didn't matter to him, and as an adult, I now know why so many parents cringed when they saw their young children practicing the Iverson carryover dribble at their bedroom mirrors. For so long I've wanted Allen Iverson to be more of a professional, and that has little to do with hair cuts and tattoos. It's easy to like players with dynamic skill sets, and immediately, the excitement generated from athletes like Jay Cutler, Joba Chamberlain, Derrick Rose, Vince Young, Michael Beasley, Terrell Owens and others comes to mind. Not all of these athletes though, are typically selfish. What they are, is undisciplined, and that lack of discipline resonates everywhere, from missed free throws, to bad reality shows, to depression, it shows. They are even more undisciplined in posture and body language, and with some of these players in serious leadership roles-point guards and quarterbacks especially-these players play their teams into games with their skill, and play their teams out of games with a lack of control.
Their biggest problem though, as has been Iverson's, is that they're no longer interested in their league if a player like them is no longer an asset. Iverson has failed to realize for many years that his teams can't really win because like all other leagues in professional sports, the NBA changes. An undersized ball-demanding former point guard and now shooting guard simply isn't a hot commodity in the NBA and never was. He had a special skill set for his size, and he still does. At one time, he was an unpredictable and unstoppable weapon in the professional game. Now, teams in the NBA need as much ball-flow as a collegiate team, and the stagnant offenses of the nineties are gone. Mature and disciplined players in all sports change their games to suit the league's style. It's why Kobe Bryant has chosen so many styles of play in his career, he's been making yearly adjustments to the changes in the league. I firmly believe that if players like Jason Terry or Moe Williams were replaced with Allen Iverson, that the Mavericks and the Cavaliers would be the favorites in their respective conferences. But Iverson would ignorantly admit that he'd be looking for Dirk Nowitzki's or Lebron James' shots, and it sickens me to know that a future hall-of-famer who has never won a championship would feel that way.
Even if an athlete felt that way, common sense should tell them to be quiet to everyone about it, the way when you get in an argument with your wife and you pull a gun, it stays your business. The world doesn't have to know what type of people these athletes are, and it seems to me that the ones obsessed with projecting their personalities onto us, are far less mature than those who don't, as players and as people. I'm very glad that I don't know about Tim Duncan or Albert Pujols' love lives, and I commend athletes like Alex Rodriguez and Dirk Nowitzki for remaining professional during times of real female turmoil in their personal lives (although Rodriguez, the dramatic diva sometimes likes to call the public's attention to his loins with a bullhorn). For the most part, athletes who desire attention need to do more to remain at the highest level just to play distractions out of their heads, but players like Iverson have always brought on distractions and disorder. He was seen as the bad influence on the 2004 Olympic basketball team, and was black-balled from the 2008 team by Jerry Colangelo early in the selections at a time when he was still a very relevant player in the NBA, just as he and his style of play have been proven to be an irrelevant side-show today and he can't find a perfect fit in the NBA.
I still have a deep love for super-stardom, improvisation, and uncanny abilities in sports, but the direct sacrifice of intelligence for those things in sports is something that deeply annoys me, and it's why YMCA's, recreational leagues, Semi-pro leagues and batting cages all over the country are full of guys who well all know can be used at the next level. The reality is though, that professional leagues are looking for professional people, and if they can't train a great athlete to be a professional athlete, then that athlete never really stays around for too long.
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