The Return of AI

On Monday night, the most memorable Philadelphia athlete of the last 25 years made his return to the City of Brotherly Love, after an unhappy three-year odyssey to Denver, Detroit, and Memphis.  The great Allen Iverson scored 11 points, kissed the Sixer logo during pre-game announcements, and the team went on to lose their 10th straight game, dropping their record to 5-16, the third-worst record in the league.  So what does Iverson returning mean?  Does it make sense?

As readers have probably noticed, we don’t do much coverage of the Sixers here at BSB.  Some quick research shows that we’ve had three posts about the team in the 2+ years we’ve been doing this blog, with the last one coming in July of 2008, when they signed Elton Brand.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  One, neither me nor Bry live in the Philly area, and while we may be willing to throw down the cash to have access to all the Phillies games, we’re not going to pay for every NBA game.  So we just don’t get to see all that many Sixer games. 

And, of course, the other reason would be that the team has been, to put it kindly, really bad.  That fact further diminishes the amount of games we get to see.  Currently, the team is scheduled to play on national television just one time for the entire rest of the season, on New Year’s Eve against the Clippers (and if anyone reading this is planning on spending their New Year’s Eve watching the Sixers play the Clippers, you need to really start reassessing your life a bit).

All of this brings me to one of the main reasons that this signing DOES make sense: the simple fact that I’m writing this post.  The team is in the news, ticket sales will increase, and, most importantly, the team is interesting again.  That’s one of the things that AI will always be able to provide: intrigue.

Beyond that though, I’m really happy that he’s back on the team.  So many of the things that Bry said about him in that post a few weeks ago were on full display in Iverson’s first press conference last week: “…you could really look into what was going on with him both on and off the court.  He never held back, and he was innately intelligent and insightful enough to verbalize it. ” 

For many fans around the country, Iverson represents everything that is wrong with the modern athlete.  But those fans are over-simplifying the guy by a mile.  I’m not here to tell anyone that Allen Iverson is a model athlete, or a model human being.  In that press conference, he says something like, “I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger.”  I’m sure he’ll continue to make mistakes.  But the biggest complaint you always hear is that “athletes today don’t give a damn”, or something along those lines.  People will point to the infamous “practice” press conference as evidence of that for Iverson.  The bottom line is, NOBODY cares more than Allen Iverson.  And that’s one of the things that makes him so compelling and someone that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed rooting for throughout the years.

We always knew that AI would not age well as a basketball player.  When so much of a player’s value rests in their speed and quickness, they’ll have a hard time getting it done at 34, 35 years old.  He is not going to make this Sixer team much better.  I’m looking at this season as a farewell tour for him, where he can score 20 points a game. 

Maybe he can have a couple throwback nights when every shot is falling, the Wachovia Center is rocking, and he drops 40 or 45, his left hand behind his ear, coaxing the fans to get even louder, as the opposing coach calls a timeout, wondering why his team can’t stop this 5-foot-nothing guard with toothpicks for legs.  Then, come April, he should announce his retirement and ride off into the sunset to wait for his call to the Hall of Fame.  It would be a fitting end to a legendary career for one of the truly iconic athletes in the history of the city.