I read this article on Iverson earlier, and it was great. I just had to share it with you guys: <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">At the close of another long football season, Allen Iverson, high school quarterback, remains the toughest guy in sports. He compensates for a body type ranking somewhere between Spike Lee's and Woody Allen's with a pain threshold that would make Brett Favre blush, a required character trait in a game charging 7-footers to fly-swat any mighty-mite carrying the ball to the goal. At 165 pounds, Iverson could sure use a helmet and pads: He leads the NBA in scoring and ice packs. But his willingness to play in pain for the Sixers isn't the only virtue making Iverson a man among taller, thicker men, not when the founding father of New School attire and attitude is acting and sounding as Old School as you can get. Iverson has grown into a model NBA player, and who woulda thunk it? He plays hard every single, mind-numbing night. He clears 40 points twice a week, and still only a half dozen players in the league average more assists. He talks up his teammates and coaches. He pulls aside young Knicks and tells them to listen to Larry Brown. "Best coach in the world," Iverson calls Brown. Seven years ago, Iverson told opposing players plenty of things about Brown, none sounding remotely like "best coach in the world." Iverson railed against David Stern's attempt to throw a nicely pressed sports coat over the league's image problems but has yet to be whistled for his first dress code violation. Yeah, Iverson's been fined for wearing his game shorts a tad long, but so has the rest of the NBA. And after his practice, we're-talking-about-practice news conference, as priceless as Jim Mora's famous "Playoffs?!" rant, Iverson will never build a reputation as an off-day gym rat. But the perception of him as a conscience-free chucker is no longer within 10 area codes of reality. Iverson is averaging 33.4 points, more than two points higher than his closest challengers, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, and yet his 7.4 assists average is three better than Bryant's and two better than James'. Iverson has roughly the same assists average as Jason Kidd, and he more than doubles Kidd's scoring sum. "Because of his cornrows and tattoos," Stern said, "people who didn't understand Allen were put off by him. But those who watched his game had an enormous amount of respect for the competitor that he is. ... Other aspects of Allen are catching up to that in a positive way. He's beginning to understand leadership and what making others around him better does for the team." Iverson is 30, a 10-year vet, not quite the Gen-X rebel he used to be. His own transition game started in Athens, after his Olympic team lost in the semifinals. Iverson had been unfairly painted as the counterculture leader of a lost cause, his thanks for showing up after so many of his superstar peers took Caribbean cruises instead. Yet Iverson responded by embracing none of the excuses Brown served up for the historic Team USA collapse. Iverson said he felt honored to represent his country and demanded that his teammates play the silver medal game with pride. It was a pleasure to listen to him that night, just as it's a pleasure now to watch him take his ordinary body to an extraordinary place. "It's remarkable to see him take a nightly pounding," Stern said, "and get right back up and say, 'Let's do it again.' " The style is a metaphor for a life spent on the rebound. The star was born to a teenage girl who raised him in an apartment often lacking electricity and water and sometimes flooded with sewage that would be as raw as the edges of Allen's personality. The bowling alley brawl. The rap album. The weed and weapon arrest. "I look back on a lot of the mistakes I made," Iverson said at the start of the season, "and I look back at just being young, just not knowing. ... I had a lot of learning to do; I had a lot of growing up to do." Iverson had 42 points and 12 assists in a recent victory against the Nets that he could've sealed with a three-pointer and instead flipped a behind-the-back pass to Kyle Korver so he could have the honor. "I've never seen a player past or present that plays like (Iverson) or competes like him," said Brown, his old coach. Maybe that's why the same league that once air-brushed Iverson's tattoos off its magazine cover is supporting a Wednesday night promotion for Sixers fans wanting those same tattoos air-brushed onto their limbs. It took a little time, but Iverson is the accepted face of today's NBA. He's the toughest quarterback in sports, a New School kid who grew into an Old School man.</div> Source: USA Today
