{"id":430,"date":"2009-12-08T23:35:10","date_gmt":"2009-12-09T04:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=430"},"modified":"2009-12-09T00:16:25","modified_gmt":"2009-12-09T05:16:25","slug":"the-return-of-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=430","title":{"rendered":"The Return of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

On\u00a0Monday night, the most memorable\u00a0Philadelphia athlete of the last 25 years<\/a> made his return to the\u00a0City of Brotherly \"iverson\"Love, after an unhappy three-year\u00a0odyssey to Denver, Detroit, and Memphis.\u00a0 The great Allen Iverson scored 11 points, kissed the Sixer logo during pre-game announcements, and the\u00a0team went on to lose their 10th straight game, dropping their record to 5-16, the third-worst record in the league.\u00a0 So what does Iverson returning mean?\u00a0 Does it make sense?<\/p>\n

As readers have probably\u00a0noticed, we don’t do much coverage of the Sixers here at BSB.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There are a couple of reasons for this.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So we just don’t get to see all that many Sixer games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, of course, the other reason would be that the team has been, to put it kindly, really bad.\u00a0 That fact further diminishes the amount of games we get to see.\u00a0 Currently, the team is scheduled to play on national television just one time\u00a0for 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).<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 The team is in the news, ticket sales will increase, and, most importantly, the team is interesting again.\u00a0 That’s one of the things that AI will always be able to provide: intrigue.<\/p>\n

Beyond that though, I’m really happy that he’s back on the team.\u00a0 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<\/a> last week: “…you could really look into what was going on with him both on and off the court.\u00a0 He never held back, and he was innately intelligent and insightful enough to verbalize it.\u00a0”\u00a0<\/p>\n

For many fans around the country, Iverson represents everything that is wrong with the modern athlete.\u00a0 But those fans are over-simplifying the guy by a mile.\u00a0 I’m not here to tell anyone that Allen Iverson is a model athlete, or a model human being.\u00a0 In that press conference, he says something like, “I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger.”\u00a0 I’m sure he’ll continue to make mistakes.\u00a0 But the biggest complaint you always hear is that “athletes today don’t give a damn”, or something along those lines.\u00a0 People will point to the infamous “practice” press conference as evidence of that for Iverson.\u00a0 The bottom line is, NOBODY cares more than Allen Iverson.\u00a0 And that’s one of the things that makes him so compelling and someone that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed rooting for throughout the years.<\/p>\n

\"iverson2\"We always knew that AI would not age well as a basketball player.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He is not going to make this Sixer team much better.\u00a0 I’m looking at this season as a farewell tour for him, where he can score 20 points a game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u00a0left hand behind his ear, coaxing the fans to get even louder, as the opposing\u00a0coach calls a timeout, wondering why his team\u00a0can’t stop this\u00a05-foot-nothing guard with toothpicks for legs.\u00a0 Then, come April,\u00a0he should announce his retirement and ride off into the sunset to wait\u00a0for his call to the Hall of Fame.\u00a0 It would be a fitting end to a legendary career\u00a0for one of the truly iconic athletes in the history of\u00a0the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On\u00a0Monday night, the most memorable\u00a0Philadelphia athlete of the last 25 years made his return to the\u00a0City of Brotherly Love, after an unhappy three-year\u00a0odyssey to Denver, Detroit, and Memphis.\u00a0 The great Allen Iverson scored 11 points, kissed the Sixer logo during … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[808,93],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nba","tag-allen-iverson","tag-sixers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}