The fate of an icon is an unenviable one. After years of adoring fans and complete validation for a lifestyle of brazen individuality and disregard for convention, he or she must realize that the same traits that allowed demi-god status inevitably serves as perfect bookends for cautionary tales about veering too far off the beaten path. The musicians and artists whose intransigent positions ended brilliant lives too early, the politicians and public figures with the gall to actually stand for something that found themselves standing ostracized (or not standing at all)… the lot of them find themselves in the same places their differences originally carved out for them at younger, more vulnerable ages, broken by the very idiosyncrasies that initially gave them such ubiquity.
Allen Iverson cannot be understood as anything less than a fallen icon, a hero stripped of his honor thanks to a history of bad decision-making and a poisoned image. Stories like his rarely end well, but his didn’t really start all that well. And after the appropriately swagtastic climax of his career, a made jumpshot in an NBA Finals game that ultimately proved insignificant, an era of NBA basketball finds itself washed out as its greatest, and perhaps smallest, warrior fades into the obscurity associated with aimless wealth and reckless indulgence.
Ten years ago, an NBA in which a still-healthy, mostly capable Iverson had no place seemed unimaginable, as most truly shocking things do, I suppose. This one, though… the fall of grace was so gradual, so expected by the time we were talking about watching live video streams from Turkey and wondering how many strip clubs a 35-year-old man could shut down without getting a a bit bored, that the tragic just became mundane. The NBA got to rewrite the narrative, making sure the Spurs and Lakers were (rightfully) remembered as the giants of their era. New wing players flourished with realm-expanding rule changes, shifting all perimeter players (particularly point guards, particularly lightning-quick ones with the ability to drain floaters and any array of mid-range jumpers under duress) into an era of unparalleled dominance. Suddenly, the game was more fun (it is), and those years of dribble-heavy, isolation-leaning, unbearably tedious ball (read: Iverson style) could finally be put in the rear view.
How the hell did a guy who represented so many different things to so many different people become so passe, such a relic of the now mythologized post-Jordan lean years? Those rules that seemed to completely favor Iverson and his skill set actually did improve his production, with a couple of his peak PERs (in 04-05 and 05-06) coming after the point-friendly changes, but consequences soonemerged for the rapidly aging, ever-injured burst of instant offense. For one, Chuck (isn’t that just the most fantastic nickname for Allen Iverson? So spot-on because of its weirdness/double entendre) not only benefited from the lack of hand checking on the perimeter and new attention to essentially any contact with a driving perimeter player: he also had to guard the guy on the other team who could do those things. This would require a new wrinkle in all of the league’s wing defenders, and Iverson had never really been all that great at moving his feet and staying alert on that particular end of the floor in the first place. Routinely, his teams, particularly his later era Nuggets, would score like mad while ultimately finding themselves utterly rudderless when confronted with actually keeping the opposing squad from doing the same.
His stubborn refusal to adjust had always endeared him to the peculiarly diverse, but similarly like-minded fanbase that he had built (Vince Carter once famously remarked that he may have always been the league’s highest vote-getter, but Iverson was the most popular player in the NBA). Just as that attitude created his mythos, it tainted his future, damning him as the greedy stat-stuffer and magnifying every time he played that part. He couldn’t adjust to the new defense he’d have to play or the new defenses built to stop him or the surge of the efficiency-rooted statistics movement in pro basketball or a new generation of fans that had somehow skipped him and remembered Jordan as “their guy” to fawn over as the hyperbloic deity of their childhoods (and, honestly, who doesn’t want to claim a little piece of the winning-frenzy-of-a-human-being that is Michael Jordan?). Once, he was identified with so much that trying to caricature him would have seemed unfair to all that had been unwittingly pinned on him: thug culture, hip-hop, blackness, youth culture, hip-hop, rebellious and over-privileged athletes, insouciance, hip-hop. So quickly, every fault revealed by the media or the man himself turned into another case of Iverson doing what he did best, generally muck things up and set team chemistry (and other “intangibles”) aflame. Comparing icons to bright stars, what with the relatively short lifespan and utter explosion by that which gave the original power, seems almost lazy, but when looking at the weirdly and suddenly tragic tale of Chuck, does anything describe this situation better than the phrase “burnt out”?
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