Allen Iverson is one of the defining basketball players the sport has ever seen. His impact on the culture of the game in the 2000s was immense and is still felt today.
The former MVP was always a star athlete, with genuine hopes of making the NFL when he was in high school. Iverson was forced to hone in on basketball as his primary sport after some encouragement from his mother, though Iverson found the sport incredibly soft.
“I hated basketball, I thought it was soft. I was always a football player. One day, my mom said, ‘you’re going to basketball practice’. I was like, ‘playing basketball is soft.’ I thank my mom. If she didn’t tell me I was going to basketball practice that day, I would have never played.”
Iverson was a terrifying quarterback prospect while growing up. He was ranked ahead of legendary quarterback Peyton Manning in the high school class of 1995. He was a dual-sport athlete in the Virginia high school system, earning the Associated Press High School Player of the Year award in both football and basketball while winning the Division 5 AAA Virginia state championship in both sports.
Allen Iverson Made The Right Call
Even though we never got to see Iverson compete at the highest level in football, we do know what he achieved in basketball. He was a standout perimeter threat in the 2000s, even winning a regular-season MVP. His scoring ability coupled with his strong defense and playmaking chops made him an all-around threat at the guard position. Even though he was just 6’0″, he never let his size define him.
Iverson averaged 26.7 points, 6.2 assists, 3.7 rebounds, and 2.2 steals in his career. He never got to scale the mountain and become an NBA Champion, but he has one of the greatest performances in NBA Finals history. Iverson made his 76ers squad the only team to beat the Lakers during their dominant 2001 title. He never got back to the NBA Finals, but he gave the world some great moments in late-career stints with the Denver Nuggets and Detroit Pistons.
The man that Reebok signed to a lifetime contract was incredibly special for the sport of basketball. All of that happened because his mother nudged him in the direction of this ‘soft’ sport instead of letting AI dominate in football.
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