Iverson Toeing the Line, Giving Life His Best Shot

For two years, I watched in wonder. I covered all but a couple of games during Allen Iverson’s two seasons at Georgetown, and he did something to make the trip to the arena worthwhile every game.

He scored only 27 seconds after checking into the game for the first time in a Georgetown uniform in an exhibition game against Fort Hood. He had 28 points by halftime and finished with 36, and five assists, in 23 minutes.

One night, in a December tournament game in Sacramento, Iverson scored 11 points in less than three minutes. At the Carrier Dome, he zipped so fast from the “S” to the “e” where it says “Syracuse” on the court it looked like a speed-reading lesson. He scored 30 just about every time he set foot in Madison Square Garden.

But at the same time, I wondered about him. He was a winner, but could he be a champion? In the biggest situations, he always came up short. He airballed a jump shot against Weber State in a second-round NCAA tournament game but teammate Don Reid grabbed the ball out of the air and laid it in, Lorenzo Charles-style, and Georgetown advanced.

In the Big East Conference championship game his sophomore season, Iverson faltered down the stretch, missing a potential game-winning shot while Connecticut’s Ray Allen made a twisting, turning jump shot that somehow bounced in.

When Iverson announced he was leaving school after two years, he left campus without a conference championship or a Final Four appearance to his credit, despite having played both seasons with two NBA top-30 picks--Jerome Williams and Othella Harrington.

I also questioned whether he really got it, whether he recognized all of the responsibilities that came with being the top selection in the NBA draft or whether he would choose a lifestyle that would have him out of the league or in a coffin before he was 30. After he was chosen by the Philadelphia 76ers there were stories throughout the summer about Iverson’s trouble-making posse. They were acting up at summer-league games, getting rowdy in hotels.

I had moved on to cover the NBA by then, but I bumped into Iverson at a preseason game.

“Yo, Allen,” I said, “People say you have to keep your crew in check.”

“Man, I don’t give a . . . what people say,” he replied.

Uh-oh.

On the court, he led all rookies in scoring, but the 76ers finished 22-60. He set a rookie record by scoring at least 40 points in five consecutive games--and the 76ers lost all of them.

Iverson’s shortcomings and mistakes always inspired more disappointment than anger. I liked the kid. Still do. Of all the compliments about Iverson that gush from the mouth of the 76ers’ hyper President Pat Croce, one sticks out: “He’ll look you in the eyes.”

It’s the realness in Iverson that makes him appealing. Honest effort in his game, honest words in his responses.

But he always had rough edges. He had a rap sheet and a controversial rap album. He clashed with Coach Larry Brown.

Except you can’t judge Iverson by the same standards you use for Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Grant Hill.

All of those guys--model players and icons--came from safe, solid two-parent households. For many years, Iverson had only his mother, who was 16 when he was born. They didn’t live in the best neighborhood, they could not always afford to keep the electricity flowing.

As he said Tuesday, “There’s no real pressure in basketball. You know, pressure is real life. It’s coming from where I came from and growing up and going through what I’ve been through to get to this point.”

Somehow he has cracked the circle of champions. Iverson’s 76ers are kings of the Eastern Conference, and even if they don’t win the NBA Finals, he has played like a champion.

“I mean, look at him,” teammate Aaron McKie said. “You look at his size and stature and say, ‘How does a guy this small dominate? How does a guy this small play so big, with the best athletes and the biggest guys in the world?’ He’s out on the floor dominating, you’d think he was 7-foot, 350 pounds. This guy is 5-11, 160 pounds at most, and he’s doing pretty much whatever he wants to do out on the floor.”

He was voted the league’s most valuable player, his team competed for the best record in the league throughout the season.

And the guy whose playing style, and hair style, were once cited as everything that is wrong with the league has come to be one of its shining stars.

How did he make this happen?

“I don’t believe anyone ever changes, but I do believe that we bend, we adapt, we mold,” Croce said. “And he has done that. I saw [from the beginning] he had a big heart. But what he’s done, he’s learned leadership skills. Learned. He learned skills to apply to what makes him such a great person.

“He cares about kids, he cares about people. He plays with a heart and a determination second to none.

“You can’t teach that. So that’s never changed. What has changed is, he’s learned the game of basketball. He’s learned to listen to Coach Brown, learned to listen to his teammates.

“I think he’s learned through his five years of turmoil, travesty, setbacks. But he just kept coming back.”

Iverson acknowledges the progress, which means acknowledging he was sometimes wrong.

“It just makes me feel that much better because I had to look in the mirror and change a lot of things about myself,” he said. “When I got into the league, I always felt like it was all about just basketball, and it wasn’t a business, and I found out the hard way that it was a business, and I just had to start doing the little things, things that I never did before.

“I think this year, I really concentrated on just being a professional, just trying to be the first one in practice, the last one to leave. Just trying to set a good example for my teammates and to make it easy for those guys to follow me.

“I just feel good to have overcome everything. You know, that people have been saying about me, saying about my teammates, my coaches, saying that we couldn’t get to this point. Just put everything aside and just go hard and be able to get to this point, it means everything to me.”

He got here because he gets it now.

You know what changed even more dramatically? The establishment. The league realized that Iverson wasn’t a threat, he was an asset.

Iverson has his flaws, he has his baggage. America knows better than to expect untarnished heroes. Bill Clinton was elected president. Twice. Our favorite TV character is a racist crime lord who cheats on his wife: Tony Soprano.

So now we have David Stern making a cameo in an AT&T; commercial that features a grandma in cornrows wearing a 76er uniform saying, “What’s up, dog?” Philadelphia’s mascot is a do-rag-wearing rabbit called Hip Hop.

Maybe we’ve all changed, made the progress that we didn’t think was possible. But, as is usually the case with the speedy Iverson, he beat us to the spot.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.