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Allen Iverson's unapologetic brilliance took him to the HOF
Philadelphia 76ers legend Allen Iverson will be enshrined into the Hall of Fame this weekend. USA TODAY Sports

Allen Iverson's unapologetic brilliance took him to the HOF

Allen Iverson moved up from the short corner to the right wing to set a screen for Eric Snow, who was initiating the offense. The screen was set on a young Derek Fisher, a head full of hair and a Forum Blue headband awkwardly wrapped around his ears. The pick and roll created a temporary switch, forcing Kobe Bryant onto Snow and Fisher onto Iverson.

After Iverson received the ball from Snow, Bryant and Fisher were able to switch back because of poor spacing. Snow cleared out and left Bryant isolated on Iverson. A.I. dribbled for a few seconds before sending a 22-footer over Bryant’s outstretched arms. As he was falling away, gooseneck still hanging off his wrist, he stumbled over a pair of camera operators who were on the sideline as the shot fell through the hoops. It isn’t clear who said what to Iverson as he was getting up off the Staples Center floor, but he gave the fan a look and a wry smile, essentially letting the building know that he was there, he was present and he was about his business.

It was late in the first quarter, and the bucket cut the Lakers' lead to five. It was Iverson’s fifth made field goal, the ninth and 10th points of a night in which he would record 48 points and lead the Philadelphia 76ers to a Game 1 victory over a Lakers team that felt indomitable heading into the NBA Finals. The Game 1 win would be the only Lakers loss of the postseason, but it would be the only game that mattered for anyone watching outside of Los Angeles.

The audacity to believe that he belonged on the same floor with the Shaquille O’Neal- and Bryant-led Lakers is what made Iverson so great. His career is defined by this dualism: the push and pull of being told he doesn’t belong and forcing his value system upon a league that wasn’t ready for it. The Lakers team left the 2001 playoffs with a single dent in its imaginative armor, and Iverson’s willingness to fight against the league’s literal and figurative institutions created the only way to think about the end of that season and his whole time in the NBA. 

In a single game, Iverson didn’t just capture the zeitgeist of his career in a brash 48 minutes, but captured the zeitgeist of a whole era of NBA basketball all while the rest of the league was trying capture his essence with every on-court and off-court decision they made. Iverson wasn’t playing hero ball because the culture dictated it, he was a hero playing ball who dictated culture.

Our collective reverence for Allen Iverson always feels like a sense of present nostalgia — our love derives from a very specific yesterday, but his apotheosis is still as tangible as it was 15 years ago. Iverson as a man and ball player was flawed, but he was an anti-hero during a time our country began celebrating anti-heroes. You can plot Iverson’s rise on the same graph with the rise of HBO’s "Sopranos" and "The Wire" and see similar trajectories. We watched Iverson like we watched mob bosses and drug lords — unapologetically doing things the way they felt they should be done.

Iverson embodied the spirit of a developed culture, but that culture was only able to manifest itself in the mainstream because of how he played on the court and his unwillingness to conform to the NBA’s antiquated belief systems. The world was changing, not because of Iverson, but Iverson was able to accelerate the aesthetic change within the subculture of basketball players and fans. The idea of "cool" has always been aspirational for every era, but Iverson’s cool was born and nurtured and developed in the inner city and delivered to the doorstep of middle America. 

The stars who move the culture today (my nephew’s favorite player is Russell Westbrook because of his inherent coolness off the court) don’t move and operate in the same way that Iverson did, but their unwillingness to compromise who they are feels Iversonian in spirit — but none will reach the magnitude of his influence. Iverson’s brand was just an extension of his humanity, while everyone now is tailoring his humanity to cater to his brand. 

Iverson the human was the same as Iverson the basketball player. His ethos was simultaneously beautiful and downright gritty. Iverson is the poster boy for an era of ugly basketball. There is something essential to basketball about watching one man try to do everything on his own. More than any other sport, basketball on a game-to-game basis can be dictated by an individual — but that isn’t the true spirit of the game. 

The 2002 Kings, the 2006 Suns, the 2013 Spurs and the 2016 Warriors all reserve a special place in the hearts of hoops fans despite not winning a title because they made the game beautiful as a team. Iverson couldn’t have existed within the ecosystems of these teams because he lived to make the game beautiful in a series of breathtaking moments, frequently to the detriment of the team. 

But when things worked out, he transcended the game. The 2001 Lakers had the greatest playoff run in NBA history, and the only thing we remember from that season is Iverson not just stepping over Tyrone Lue, but stepping over a standardized status quo and all but immortalizing himself in the NBA’s canon. On Friday, his quest for becoming a cultural deity will become fully realized as he’s enshrined into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

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