The cornrows were always done to perfection, even if he had to get them braided courtside courtesy of his Momma Ann. Artistic expression displayed across his body. His fashion choices made some uncomfortable, but felt like representation for niggaz like me. The earrings. The chains. The way he spoke. He became the center of every young NBA hopeful’s mood board before mood boards were even a thing.
He was nothing like any player the NBA had ever seen before. NBA officials, white America, and a couple uppity Black folks peppered in the mix, were not happy. They had questions. Lots of them. Most centered around the six foot rookie who had just signed to the Philadelphia 76ers.
On November 1, 1996, he walked through the doors of the CoreStates Center located at the corner of 3601 S. Broad Street and dropped 30 of the team’s 103 points against the Milwaukee Bucks. The Sixers lost that night, but The Answer? The answer was very clear.
Dressed in an oversized white Sixers uniform, cracking a smile at the crowd as he disappeared back into the locker room, Allen Iverson had arrived.
The answer was A.I.
Nahhh, not that A.I.
[Remember, this was 1996! Stay focused yall lol.]
Allen Iverson was that A.I.
And he kicked the doors off the NBA.
They weren’t ready.
But the kids growing up in hoods all around the world, especially Philly, were.
“I’m human just like everybody else”
- Allen Iverson
There was a real shift happening and it was happening in real time. For years kids grew up wanting to be “Like Mike.”
Michael Jordan was perfection. Clean cut. Bald ass head shining underneath arena lights. A smile made for commercials and corporate America. Jordan was aspiration.
Where I’m from, we respected Jordan, but niggaz wanted to be like AI.
The girls adored him.
The boys studied him. Suddenly we all started growing fro’s, growing them to just the right length to be gripped for cornrows. Cornrows multiplied across barbershops and school hallways like crazy. Arm sleeves became mandatory. Tattoos stopped feeling taboo and started feeling like pure honesty, almost like a badge of honor. Even the way young buls carried themselves changed. Smaller guards finally had somebody to point to. Somebody that made being undersized feel dangerous instead of limiting.
Iverson didn’t ask lil Black and Brown kids from places like Philly to clean themselves up before dreaming big. He showed up as himself first. Loud. Hurt. Flashy. Defiant. Vulnerable. Hood. Him!
And the league hated how much we loved him for it. Those niggaz in those suits, seated inside suites, were heated at the mere sight of AI.
That tension became even more visible when you looked over at the sidelines and saw Coach Larry Brown standing there with his arms folded tight, like squeezed butt cheeks holding in a fart.
“Everyday, I was ready to trade him”
- Coach Larry Brown
Coach Brown and AI felt like oil and water at times. One represented structure. The other represented freedom. One believed discipline was love. The other believed survival already required discipline.
But somehow they needed each other.
Larry Brown gave Iverson the structure the league demanded from him, while Iverson gave Brown’s system a heartbeat. It started feeling less like coach and player and more like father and son. The kind of relationship built on constant frustration, impossible expectations, stubbornness, and underneath all of that, love neither one of them always knew how to express.
“Only The Strong Survive” [Tattoo on AI’s left upper arm]
Ann Iverson was 12 years old when she lost her mother due to an infection shortly after undergoing a tubal ligation surgery when she was 30 years old. By the age of 15, Ann became pregnant and eventually gave birth to her baby boy Allen on June 7, 1975. Since birth the scale was never even for young Allen. Inherently adapting to a life navigated in survival mode. Throughout his life he fought through situations that from the outside looking in seemed impossible to get over. Everything from family illnesses, death, life in the hood, and legal issues that could have put him away for years, but he stepped right over them, like he would do to other players in the years to come while a member of the NBA.
Allen was raised by a teen mother that was able to give him a solid foundation and speak up for him no matter what. It was Ann Iverson that passed down the mantra he came into the NBA with, “Only The Strong Survive.” He was rough as hell around the edges. He didn’t look like the other players. He didn’t play like them either. He was better, and he knew he was better. He’d step onto that court night after night like a fucking lightning bolt. Impossible to guard. The king of handles and crossing over. Adding a new name to his victim list each night. His shit talking on the court was legendary.
And no matter how mad or uncomfortable he made people, he carried a team suffering through an 18 year drought when he joined in 1996 to places they had never seen before him, all while being 100% himself.
"You got all these personalities; why would everybody dress the same?... Now, I get the flowers for it from them."
-Allen Iverson
Fashion became another battleground entirely. Before Iverson, the NBA wanted its stars polished down into something easier to sell. Suits. Smiles. Carefully curated answers. But AI walked into arenas dressed like the niggaz from the hood that raised him. Four X white tees. Throwback jerseys. Timbs. Durags. Diamond earrings shining underneath camera flashes. Tattoos across his body unapologetically visible. He looked like us. Literally like all of my cousins, or the homies standing outside the Papi store.
The NBA eventually responded with a dress code in 2005, and everybody knew who that passive ass message was really for. Allen Iverson became the face of a conversation much bigger than basketball. Race. Class. Respectability. Fear. The league marketed Black culture every night while simultaneously trying to contain it. AI never folded. Even when they fined him. Criticized him. Called him selfish. Called him irresponsible. Called him everything except what he actually was. Authentically HIM.
Allen Iverson resonated because he showed an entire generation that you did not have to erase yourself to be seen as great. He gave people permission to be complicated. To carry your hood, your trauma, your flaws, and your people with you instead of pretending they never existed. It’s ok to be MISUNDERSTOOD.
"I don't have no regrets... I wouldn't change anything... because look how many people that I'm going to help by being me."
-Allen Iverson
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