He’s Had a Lot of Practice

You’re not hard-core

Unless you live hard-core.

-- Dewey Finn,

“The School of Rock”

*

SACRAMENTO -- Meet hard-core.

Genius comes in many packages, but no one ever saw anything like Philadelphia’s Allen Iverson, a one-man cultural revolution from the top of his cornrows to the bottom of his shorts, which drooped inches from his black ankle braces and inspired one of many memos from the league office.

Referees called him for palming on his killer crossover dribble. The media were shocked by his failure to pay proper, or any, deference to Michael Jordan. The furor took years to die down; before one game in Washington, Iverson’s tattoos were airbrushed out in his picture on the program cover.

Can it be 10 seasons? It doesn’t seem that long, unless you’re Iverson and then you wonder how you made it.

“I was so young,” he said before last week’s game here. “I just came into the league. Didn’t know any of the things that I know now, far as on the basketball court.

“Off the court I’m not the same person anymore. I’ve grown in 10 years.... When I was losing so much in the beginning, it was all negative publicity and everything that came with that. And a lot of the negative publicity was well-deserved.”

Born in poverty, jailed for four months before being pardoned after a bowling alley melee in high school, he has gone from outlaw icon to mainstream admiration. In an age in which sneaker companies anoint stars as teens, he’s a throwback to Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Charles Barkley, who had big personalities to match and did more than make commercials.

These days an NBA star may be as bland in person as LeBron James or as subdued as Dwyane Wade. For actual personality, it’s down to Kobe Bryant, whose career has become a high-wire act; Shaquille O’Neal, just because he’s Shaquille O’Neal; and Iverson, who could never be anything but Allen Iverson.

Iverson is a beating heart in sneakers and a basketball uniform. Measured at 6 feet and 167 pounds in the 1996 pre-draft camp, he has spent 10 seasons going to the hoop with utter disdain for the giants waiting for him.

“If he didn’t play like he does, I don’t think there would be as much interest in the team and people wouldn’t be as forgiving of him,” said former 76er coach Jack Ramsay. “But he plays with such all-out intensity, a little guy, throwing himself into traffic, and never stops. I mean, never stops!”

At 30, with one most-valuable-player award, six All-Star selections and four scoring titles, Iverson practices sporadically, limps around after games wrapped in ice bags and now, at the end of a long trip, has a cold that drops his voice an octave, but he still leads the NBA in minutes. When former teammate Speedy Claxton, who played alongside Tony Parker in San Antonio and is now with Chris Paul and the Hornets in Oklahoma City, was asked recently who’s the fastest, he said, “A.I., by far.”

It’s nothing new for Iverson, who has dominated every team he has been on since his junior year in high school in Newport News, Va., when he figures he may have been 5-10, 150. He was as much a phenomenon in football, his favorite sport, which he intended to play in college before the melee changed everything.

The area was a cradle for athletic quarterbacks such as Aaron Brooks, whom he played against, and Michael Vick and Ronald Curry, who came later, but Iverson was a local legend. NFL Films even did a feature on him, complete with footage in which he looked like a right-handed Vick, with Vick gushing about him.

Crowds still follow wherever Iverson goes. Despite years of decline, the 76ers are No. 5 in road attendance. Philadelphia fans, famous for pelting Santa Claus with snowballs and booing the mere mortals on their teams, adore Iverson.

“He’s a lot better as far as off-the-court stuff goes,” said Howard Eskin, a Philadelphia talk show host who has feuded with Iverson off and on for 10 years. “He’s no angel, but he’s better.

“People blame the organization. They still blame Larry Brown. They blame [GM] Billy King. They did blame Charles when he left. But they don’t blame Allen.”

Iverson still does it his way, hoisting 26 shots nightly. At Georgetown, John Thompson, who wasn’t known for his patience with wild freshmen, got out of his way. Brown, whose flexibility, or lack thereof, rivaled Iverson’s, had him traded to Detroit before Matt Geiger killed the deal by refusing to waive his 15% trade kicker (dwarfing anything else Geiger did for the 76ers).

The 76ers then went to the 2001 Finals, where Iverson dropped 48 points on the Lakers, who had gone 11-0 in the playoffs, in a stunning Game 1 upset.

“I’m glad nobody bet their life on it,” Iverson said, “because they definitely would be dead right now.”

Wide-eyed and spontaneous, he was endearing when he was talking and wasn’t upset. When he saw a tape of Brown praising him on Stephen A. Smith’s show recently, he teared up on the air.

Whatever he did, or whatever happened to him, happened big. Women’s gay rights groups picketed his 2000 rap album. In 2002, news of a domestic complaint, in which no charges were brought, dominated the local media for weeks; a TV helicopter did a flyover at his home.

But 10 years is 10 years, even if it goes fast, and 30 is a lot different from 20.

Iverson is now shooting 45% with a 2-1 assist-turnover ratio. He still gets into the news -- he just denied throwing $10,000 worth of chips at an Atlantic City, N.J., blackjack dealer who reportedly gave them to him by mistake and tried to reclaim them -- but it’s minor by comparison. He’s less defensive and even laughs at himself, as when he squawks “Practice?” in a parody of his famous news conference rant.

With more wins, he’d be in the thick of the MVP race, but the 76ers are back in the pack. Iverson, who said it’s easy for him to play the way he does because winning means so much to him, may never get another chance to win it all.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about that,” he said. “I hear the critics. I hear people in the media and my critics saying that I probably won’t win one and that’s going to be how people look at me after my career’s over.

“I still believe that I’m going to win a championship. I still believe that. I have to always believe that or it’s definitely never going to happen. I’m going to continue to hear that until it happens. But, I mean, I believe in myself and the organization and who they bring in here.

“And it’s only a series away. You get to the playoffs, you just got to win those series, and I feel like if you give me the opportunity, then anything can happen.”

That’s some if. Typically, teams realize they have to rebuild and players realize they have to pull up stakes, but there was never anything typical about Iverson. For what it’s worth, he said he’d rather lose than leave.

“I’d rather finish my career here and not win a championship than try to go chase one,” he said. “You know, it wouldn’t feel the same. I’ve been through so much here. I’ve grown from a boy to a man being in Philadelphia. Being in a tough city helped me to become a better person, a better player, a better father, a better husband, the whole nine.”

With or without a title, he proved his greatness long ago. Ten years later, it’s still there, breathtaking in its audacity. As there was never anything like him before, there may never be again. And, finally, that’s what counts.