Sixers' Iverson starts his 10th season with same old fearlessness of youth, but added maturity of experience

Sixers' Iverson starts his 10th season with same old fearlessness of youth, but added maturity of experience

By PHIL JASNER

jasnerp@phillynews.com

He is a tiny bumper car in a land of behemoths. He is a slick, sleek, low-to-the-ground racer in a world of SUVs and Land Rovers. He is a basketball anomaly, a (barely) 6-foot, (maybe) 165-pound player who casts a giant shadow.

He is Allen Iverson, about to embark on the final leg of a decade of chills, thrills and spills with the 76ers. His smile, and his game, remains as luminous as his credits. At 30, he has emerged as who he said he would become all along.

He is not perfect. He never said he was. In fact, he always insisted the opposite, pointing out that he was as human, as fallible as anyone. The critics filled his consciousness the way he fills a box score. Every gem has flaws, sometimes painfully noticeable ones. But this gem, buffed with time and experience, still sparkles. Completing a decade with the 76ers - among active players, only Minnesota's Kevin Garnett has been with the same NBA team longer, by one season - he has won four scoring titles, two Most Valuable Player awards, been named first team all-league three times, been named to the U.S. Olympic team and been voted the MVP of the All-Star Game twice.

Flaws? He has led the league in steals, but also in turnovers. Last season, he led the league in shots missed from the floor, the only one to miss more than 1,000 times (771-for-1,818). His career shooting percentage is a mere 41.8 percent. In two different seasons, his average has been below 40 percent. In three of six playoff seasons, his shooting percentage has equally been below 40 percent. He has openly battled with coaches, primarily Larry Brown and Chris Ford. Today, he refers to Brown as "the best coach in the world."

What have 610 regular-season, 62 postseason and six All-Star Games done to Allen Iverson? He entered the league at 21, as the No. 1 overall pick in the 1996 draft. Shortly thereafter, he wondered why people wanted him to speak, act and dress as if he were 30. He said that, when he reached that point in his life, perhaps he would do all of those things but made no promises. Even then, he said what he thought and refused to back off from strong, heartfelt beliefs. He didn't invent hip-hop, but he has become an icon of the culture, embracing and defending it. He has said he "probably will abide" by the league's new business-casual dress code, but he never will agree with it.

Iverson the star? Only three other players in league history - 7-1 Wilt Chamberlain, 6-6 Michael Jordan and 6-8 George Gervin - have won as many as four scoring titles. Other than the legendary Chamberlain, he is the only player in franchise history to score as many as 60 points in a game. Last season, he became the first player since steals were included as an official statistic to finish in the top five in scoring (30.7), assists (7.9) and steals (2.4).

"He's the best athlete ever," says Eric Snow, traded by the Sixers to the Cleveland Cavaliers before the start of last season. "For him to come out and do what he's done for 10 years... the last 5, they've been saying he's going to wear down. Last year was probably his best year ever. He has been an MVP, a scoring leader. He does what he does, night in and night out, all the time. It's amazing. He still amazes me to this day. He's one of the best competitors to ever play competitive sports, and he's arguably the toughest."

Iverson doesn't just run up and down the floor. He careens among the wide bodies, absorbing constant, punishing contact, yet remaining fearless, as if that's the way it must be if he is to be true to himself and to the game he plays. If he has lost even part of a step, it's not easily recognizable. He still launches volumes of shots, even in the preseason, and not all of them are necessarily the right ones. But he has learned to have more trust in teammates, has built up a vast backlog of knowledge and has become a smarter passer. He still wants to play every minute of every game, and no one has proven that he doesn't have that capability. As often as he has been knocked down, as often as those splashdowns have brought gasps from the crowd, he always has gotten back up and hungrily come back for more.

"It doesn't really surprise me, because to be surprised, I think you would have had to doubt him," says the Cavaliers' Larry Hughes, also a former teammate. "I never doubted him. From the time I started watching him, I knew he was a guy who would do whatever it took. I know if he gets hit, he's going to get back up. I kind of expect that, from what I've seen."

Ten years later, Iverson physically feels, in his words, the same.

"I just continue to play the way that's made me successful," he says. "I think once I stop being aggressive on the basketball court I'll be hurting my team more than helping it. I feel the same, and at times I feel like I'm getting faster. I always thought about Michael Jordan's career, and I watched as he got older and it seemed like he got a lot better. When he was 30, 31, 32, 33, I think he was at the top of his game. I approach it like that. I feel the older I get, the better I get. I'll probably end up getting a little slower, but once that happens, once I'm not able to do the things that I'm capable of doing, then I'll give the game up."

But not yet. Not hardly yet.

"In my opinion, he's the greatest little man who has ever played the game," said former NBA star guard Mark Jackson, now a TV analyst. "And that comes from a guy who has played against a bunch of the greats."

Remember, though, every gem has flaws. In this league, scouts are trained to search for them. That doesn't mean they don't respect his ability or accomplishments. That means they're doing what they're paid to do.

"I don't think he's changed all that much," one West Coast scout says. "He's still a volume shooter, his percentage is about the same, he's still a pretty good foul shooter and gets tons of steals. He can't guard one-on-one, he's not a good three-point shooter. But he puts the fear of God in everybody, because he's impossible to guard. The thing is, he was that 10 years ago. He's hard to game-plan for, but he's been that for 10 years, too. One difference is, he gets more calls now, which makes him more difficult to deal with in the open court. He hasn't lost anything, and about that, I'm shocked. He blows me away with that. And to get 23 to 25 shots a game, that's hard to do, especially when teams prepare for you over 82 games."

Another scout says: "He came into the league as a high-energy guy, a tremendous talent. Now, he's playing the game better. I don't mean jumping higher or running faster. He's just learned how to play better, although maybe not to the degree people want. You've got to game-plan for him. If we have a 2-hour session, half of it is devoted to, 'What are we going to do about this guy?' I thought he didn't have quite the [quality] year 2 years ago, but then last year he made all-league first team again. So I don't think [him losing anything] is an issue."

Larry Brown coached Iverson and the Sixers for six pulsating seasons, starting in 1997-98. Brown, now coaching the New York Knicks, says he came away thinking "it's unbelievable" after watching excerpts of a scouting tape from the Sixers' preseason opener against the Houston Rockets.

"It was incredible what he was doing," Brown says. "I was laughing. He looked like the same kid I coached my first year."

Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy says it was Iverson's tenacity and competitive nature that first caught his eye. That, he says, is still very much in evidence.

"I don't think he gets enough credit for his intelligence as a player and I don't really know why. He's great at sniffing out plays, with great anticipation. I think now he knows when to shoot and when to pass much, much better. He has a great grasp of what the other team is trying to do. His mental game is such that, if he ever starts to lose a little speed, I think he'll still be a very good player because he's taken the time to learn the game.

"He may be more coachable than what he appears to want to be. I saw [Jim O'Brien last season] move him to the point, and he said, 'OK, fine.' [Maurice Cheeks this season] says he'd like him to lead the league in assists, and he says, 'OK, fine.' Even Johnny Davis, in Allen's first year, said he wanted him to shoot more, and he said, 'OK, fine.' I'm sure Larry Brown had other demands. I had a chance to watch him in training camp at Penn State the year I was out of coaching. I had heard about this guy who didn't practice, or didn't practice hard or correctly. I was only there 4 days, but I thought it was a misconception. Maybe he wants the notion to be that he's a renegade and a rebel as far as railing against authority, but I haven't seen it in games when I've coached against him."

Iverson the person? He and his wife, Tawanna, have four children: daughters Tiaura and Messiah, sons Allen II and Isaiah.

"I can say he's matured a great bit," says Snow, "but it wasn't like he was just this totally immature kid. That wasn't the case. He's matured to the point where he's taken on his responsibilities more. When I was there, it was, 'E Snow, you handle the leadership, I'm just playing basketball.' Now, he understands that being the best player on the team and one of the best in the league, it has to come from him.

"I tell people all the time, if you're not his teammate, you could easily look at all the things you hear and see [and form an opinion], but once you become his teammate you love him. You just have to be around him to understand. I call him the most misunderstood guy that I know. You don't see many people who have become his teammate saying bad things and talking [negatively] about him. You never hear it. You never see it."

Doug Overton, now the Sixers director of player development, was a backup point guard during Iverson's rookie season. No part of the growth process surprises him.

"His game evolved," Overton says. "He wants to be a complete player. Did he want to be a complete player then? Probably so, but he didn't know how to do it. I think he found the formula, to make his teammates better. Guys come in and want to get better, but how many want to make their teammates better?"

Iverson stayed on the path, rarely caring what anyone else thought or how he was perceived. Like Charles Barkley and others before him, he was perceived - correctly - as a notorious night owl. It was reasonable to wonder if that lifestyle might affect his playing career.

"Everybody develops in their own way," Overton says. "Some guys can be good in some ways, and not mature in others. He's still married, still has his family. I look at those things even more than what he's done on the court. I don't really look at the window dressing; I look at the substance inside. I think he's grown because he's been through so much."

Ten years later, it seems like only yesterday when he first arrived.

"I think now, he's more at peace with himself," says Johnny Davis, Iverson's coach for just his rookie season and now an assistant with Minnesota. "Just like most people, when you start out young and you get 10 years older, you view the world differently; you see things differently. You let experience help you. You understand what people around you are trying to do, and you relate to that better. He's a family man now. He's married. All of those things play a part in helping a guy become balanced in life and settled. And I think it shows itself on the floor."

Ten years later, he appears as ready for a challenging season as he has ever been. Whatever else about him has changed, that - like his resolve, his pain threshold, his fearlessness and his crossover move - has remained, almost amazingly, the same.