Allen Iverson's crossroad

Some lacrosse coverage for Monday's Journal leads into what's been on my mind today. The wheels started turning shortly before Mike Beasley gave himself the world's worst tattoo, then subsequently checked himself into rehab. Meaning that the following has nothing to do with him.

Someone commented over at SLAMonline this morning that it was sad that AI is looking more and more like he'll be a Charlotte Bobcat come opening night. At this point, he's lucky to be playing in the league at all.

Having worked in media for the last few years, I've noticed that it's easy for people in the spotlight to tend to think that they're bigger or more important than they are. From a media standpoint, you can get a bit of swagger to your step if you think about the potential audience that you have. Webhits, circulation, Nielsen ratings, they all can turn into a confidence booster. And to an extent, I suppose they should. There's nothing wrong with feeling good about your job and its importance.

For an athlete, the boosters turn into towering stilts. I might be writing at a game with 30,000 people watching, but I'm not the reason those people are there. No one in the stands wears my jersey or recites my stats to me after the game when they're asking for my autograph. The only thing more absent from my life than the endorsements and media attention that a pro athlete receives is the groupie love.

From his time at Georgetown and straight through to the present in his pro career, Allen Iverson has been lauded for being the antithesis of every other player that came before him. This is where things have gotten hazy for him. Iverson the person has received infinite praise for not bending to the NBA's fan-friendly image. The cornrows (1996–2009), the ink that spread across his body year-by-year, the sweats and throwbacks in the pre-game stayed constant for Iverson. He made the world warm up to him, rather than clean himself up so the league could market him better.

On the court, he did the same thing. Intro'd to the league as a point guard, Ivy shot first, looked for teammates later. He's under six-feet-tall, but he knew from Day 1 that no one could check him. I have no doubt that if he wanted to, that if he chose to listen to his coaches, that he could have been an Isiah Thomas, scoring around 20 a game and dishing anywhere from 10–15 assists a night.

Instead, he put his head down and went to the hole. Larry Hughes, Tim Thomas, Jerry Stackhouse, Andre Iguodala and a slew of other talented players wilted around him in Philly. The only success (read: winning) Ivy found in his career came in 2000, when, surrounded by a pack of defensive-minded scrubs and Dikembe Mutombo, the Sixers went to the Finals and lost to Shaq, Kobe and Lakers. Iverson won the regular-season MVP, Shaq won the Finals MVP. That in itself tells the story of AI's career.

The problem for Iverson now, at 34, is that the teams that he wants to play on don't want him to shoot the ball 20 times a night. He ran into this in his Detroit stay. Refusing to come off of the bench and play a role down the stretch of the season and subsequently sitting out the rest of the year, Ivy has potentially laid the foundation for how his career will transpire. Labeled as poison to any contender, the offers have come in this summer from Memphis, Sacramento, Miami and Charlotte. Not exactly the cream of the NBA's crop, is it?

No one can perform at the same level athletically for their entire career, but it seems that Iverson has his wires crossed. After years of being praised for going against the mainstream both on and off the court in his pro career, Iverson can't seem to wrap his head around the concept of playing a role. It's as if by changing his game up, he's selling himself out. Coming off the bench is akin to burning the throwbacks, lasering over the tatts. He shed the cornrows at All-Star this past year, but that appears to be the only change that AI is open to.

Some people say that it'd be tragic if he went out this way, that it'd be a forced retirement. Just like it has been the last 13-plus years, the only person forcing anything in this situation is Iverson.