Allen Iverson’s bankruptcy reaffirms character issues

Allen Iverson earned $154 million over the course of his 15-year basketball career. He presently owes $860,000 in an unpaid jewelry debt. Not many people are going to have much sympathy for him, which is perfectly warranted—Iverson has often been difficult to like, even though there were times when it was impossible not to watch with wonder as he played the game of basketball in a singular and unique way. The fact that an athlete who briefly owned the sport has now reached what is surely his professional nadir is, on some level, sad. Only I don't know how exactly I should feel about it all.

It would be both incredibly easy and ultimately unfair to turn this story into an indictment of the profligacy of the modern athlete, or a grumpy harangue about how anybody foolish enough to squander such a fortune probably did not deserve that much money in the first place. Conversely, it would be hard to justify calling this fall from grace tragic—there are fates far worse things than jewelry debt. However, there is surely something darkly poignant and somewhat depressing about what has happened to AI—not only the problems of financial improvidence that currently beset him, but, really, everything that has led him here.

The relationship between Iverson and the general public has been tenuous and tumultuous at best. He has always struck people as arrogant and selfish, which might be true, but this perception certainly flows to an extent from his showy, shoot-first, seemingly boastful style of play. Furthermore, at a time when NBA commissioner David Stern was trying to clean up the league's "too black" image by implementing a dress code, Iverson's cornrows and tattoos seemed thuggish to mainstream sports fans. For this, he was always unapologetic. Yet what really frustrated so many people about Iverson was the fact that this same person who they found unlikable possessed such a phenomenal talent. Iverson was an explosive and powerful athlete even though he was noticeably diminutive; he had such faculty for basketball that he made the game look beautiful and effortless. Outside of Philadelphia, most sports fans internalized Iverson in his prime with a type of double register: At once, they'd be jaw-dropped in amazement while also muttering to themselves, "What a waste of talent."

What makes the story of Allen Iverson so saddening is that such greatness came bundled in such an emotionally complicated package, and, moreover, that we as a public judged him for having unresolved issues that he had no say in in the first place. So much of who Iverson is stems from his upbringing in a poor, crime-ridden area of Hampton, Va. It was his experience on the rough streets of Hampton that he developed his style of play. It was through the racism he encountered on and off the court that he developed a chip on his shoulder. Once it became clear that he had a chance to make it, and not only to make it out of Hampton, but to make it out for Hampton, Iverson became burdened with the weight of an entire community's expectation. When Iverson had to serve jail time for his role in a bowling alley fight that may have been racially motivated before he had even played college ball, he probably concluded that he would never get the benefit of the doubt, that he'd appear forever to be an incorrigible hoodlum and a "waste of talent."

There were those years with the Philadelphia 76ers, though, when Iverson was transcendent in the fullest sense of the word. It felt like there was no one he couldn't beat off the dribble, no shot too impossible for him to take. His masterpiece was his 2001 season, during which he led the league in scoring and steals, led his team to the NBA finals and was awarded MVP honors. Contrast those moments of glory to today, where I imagine that a sizable portion of the people that Iverson entertained during his prime will look at his present debased and destitute state and, self-satisfied, think to themselves, "I was right all along. Of course he'd blow it all on jewelry. What a waste."