Misunderstood, p.1
Misunderstood, page 1
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PRACTICE
The reason I did that press conference—you might know the one—was that I was good for the first time in a minute. It was May 7, 2002. My sixth season in the NBA had just finished in disappointment. Although I was already a two-time All-Star, an MVP, and nearly an NBA champion, rumors were circulating that Coach Larry Brown and I weren’t getting along and that the 76ers would soon trade me. Trade me from the city I loved, the city that had embraced me from the beginning, the city that was home. Now everyone wanted to know what was next. Would Coach Brown return? Would I return?
I had been dealing all year long with hearing those rumors. Where’s Allen Iverson going to get traded? The 76ers don’t want Allen Iverson anymore. He’s not getting along with Coach Larry Brown. Even my kids had to deal with it in school. Teachers: Tell your dad don’t leave. Classmates: Can you beg your dad not to leave? My family too. They’re telling me: Chuck don’t leave.
It was pissing me off. So we set a meeting with me, Coach Brown, and our general manager, Billy King, where we’re going to get this shit straight. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen today.
The message in that meeting was simple: You’re not going anywhere. Coach Brown’s not going anywhere. You’re here to stay. Coach Brown is here to stay. Then we talked. We got back to being the loving family. We relaxed and were back to normal. I admit that it was bad before that. I didn’t think they wanted me. The season had been long. I expected the worst. To me, loyalty is everything. Everything. So when they said it—you’re not going anywhere, the family is staying together—yes, I was happy. The rest of that meeting was like making up with a girlfriend you’re beefing with. At this point, you know you’re sticking it out, so you can make your other points, like this or that can’t happen anymore. But it was back to the way it was. I’m telling stories like I do. Coach Brown starts telling stories in his old-school way. Then everybody hugged. So like I said, I was good.
Once the decision was made, we all agreed to call a press conference. I could let the city know, let the whole world know. I’m staying, we’re all staying. We have good news.
So I got in the press room. It was just me at the long table, microphones below, cameras pointed, the reporters staring up at me. All the Philly press came for this one. I’ll be honest, I didn’t always get along with the press. Never have. These motherfuckers had been telling the world what a terrible guy I am since I was a kid. And there they all were. They were unhappy because we’d lost. Unhappy because I wasn’t the man they wanted me to be. Unhappy—hell, I don’t know all the reasons they were unhappy.
Anyway, I was good. I figured I had good news. It was good news to me. I’m staying. I’m coming to say I’m going to be here—that’s it. City has nothing to worry about, teammates have nothing to worry about, family has nothing to worry about. I have nothing to worry about.
But then the devil entered the room with a microphone. So what about the situation with the practices? Practice. It was one of the first questions. In response, I said the word practice a lot, as everyone in the whole damn world knows, but this was the main part that gets replayed over and over:
I’m supposed to be the franchise player, and we’re in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we’re talking about practice. Not a game! Not a game! Not a game! We’re talking about practice. Not a game. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it’s my last. Not the game. We’re talking about practice, man. I mean, how silly is that?
I never considered that this press conference would change my legacy. To that point, it was my moves on the basketball court that went viral—before going viral was a thing. But after that press conference, “practice” became as recognizably me as any crossover, any jump shot, any championship, or any heartbreak.
When I think about that press conference, the reality is there was a lot of other shit going on. To me, practice shouldn’t have been the focal point. We had a bad end to the season, and there was my future I was trying to clarify for the world. But it was more than that even. If you listen to the whole press conference, the parts that didn’t get repeated, I tried to explain. “I lost my best friend,” I said. And between that and a disappointing season, I told them I was feeling “that everything is going downhill for me as far as my life. I’m human. I am just like you. You bleed just like I bleed, you cry just like I cry, you hurt just like I hurt.” I said that, yet the reporters kept asking me about practice.
“I lost my best friend.” In fact, at that exact time, a trial was going on in Virginia. They were prosecuting the killer of that best friend—Rahsaan Langford, just “Ra” or “Ra Boogie” to us. Me and Ra were like brothers. Ra got killed about seven months earlier, in the early morning of October 14, 2001. That was during Sixers training camp.
I didn’t know it at the time, but if you look back at that trial, the prosecutor—from the same prosecutor’s office that put me in jail nine years before—was busy telling the jury how much they weren’t going to like Ra and his friends. My friends. Me. “A murder is a murder,” the prosecutor said, “even if you don’t like the victim and his friends.” I shouldn’t act surprised. The truth is, so many people never liked me and my friends—my “posse” or “entourage,” they’d call it. It wasn’t just all the reporters in the room. It wasn’t just that prosecutor. So many people hated the dudes I grew up with, the life I’d come from, the streets I’d survived.
My whole life, on one side was my home, my upbringing, my people, and then on the other, basketball and everything that comes with that. One pulls, the other pushes. One thing I never did, that I refused to do, was to let go of home. Everyone told me to. A million times they told me to move on. But would I put in the rearview the people and the place that had my back from the beginning? The people and place that were the foundation of what I became?
That whole 2001–02 season, home pulled hard. I lost my best friend. I said it right there in the press conference. That shit broke me. And after losing Ra, we lost the goddamn games—the games I’d gone out there and played like they were my last. I lost the games. That shit broke me too. We were out of the playoffs in the first round after making it to the Finals the year before, after my MVP season. It hurt so fucking bad because the games meant everything to me.
So in that first press conference after ending our season, after losing, not one question about those games.
They wanted to talk about practice?
* * *
Let me tell you about Ra’s murder. Because if you want to know about the press conference, about practice, about me, you need to know about it.
So, I wasn’t there when Ra got shot, but I was supposed to be. We were going to go out to a nice club in Hampton, Virginia, to watch the Mike Tyson fight against Brian Nielsen. The same night, the Yankees were playing the Oakland A’s in the playoffs. Ra was from the Bronx and was a Yankees fan. We were planning on doing it “upper-room style.” That’s what we’d say. We were “upper-room brothers” like Martin and Eddie in the movie Life. But I missed my plane from Philly to Virginia. I can’t even remember why.
That night, without me, he’d gone to one of the worst places you can be in Hampton. It was a place I avoided. Yeah, I had gone there when I was young, when I wasn’t afraid of anything. But not anymore.
He came to the spot with a few people, including a young dude that we called Fiend. All this I heard after the fact, of course. I was in Philly. We were in training camp, but I was nursing an injured elbow so I wasn’t yet playing. From what I was told, the killer came into the club. He had a lazy eye. So when he came in, you know Ra was a jokester. Ra was like, Fiend, you hanging with blind dudes now? And the guy went crazy. Motherfucker, you don’t know who I am. I do this. I do that. Ra was like, Calm down, it’s all good. So Ra kept watching the Tyson fight. But the dude was staring at Ra the whole night. He couldn’t let it go.
The Yankees game ended (the Yankees won—the game where Derek Jeter made the backhand throw to home against the A’s) and the fight was over (Tyson could still fight, so he had no problem). Ra got in the car with Fiend, and it turned out the dude had been following Ra out the club. And so they said Ra turned around and smiled at him. Pulled off. Fiend stopped for something along the way, and while Ra waited in the car, the dude came up, opened the door to Ra’s car. Ra got out the car, and the dude let it go. Shot him right there. Then he took off.
Hearing the shots, Fiend ran out, saw Ra’s body on the ground, and got in the car and also drove off. Screeching tires. Ra left alone to die. That’s all I could think about. Him alone on the ground, his blood staining the concrete as his life left him.
When I found out that Ra got killed, my heart broke. I should have been there. He shouldn’t have been in that spot. All those thoughts come to your mind. What-ifs. And you know, he was one of the baddest motherfuckers of my friends from home. When we were kids, he was hustling and keeping me out of trouble. Ra actually helped push me off the streets. He said, Don’t ever come back here. You focus on sports. And then when I was in jail and
When I made it, I brought him with me. He was there with me every year since. He was at my wedding. I was at his. He pursued his passion with music. And I helped him along that path.
This was the man shot to death.
That whole fall, from October 14, 2001, to the new year, I was dealing with this murder. With the funeral. With my grief. And I had a whole new family to take care of. Ra had three kids. He had a wife. Of course I was going to take care of them. I ended up paying for their home, their car, their school. How could I not? And if that makes me irresponsible with my money, so be it.
Meanwhile, the season wasn’t going well either. Playing without me, we started the season slow. Once I came back, things improved, but not enough.
In January, they finally caught the killer. As the season went on, the trial approached.
We faced the Celtics in the playoffs, and they had home court. We lost the series in five games, 3–2. I averaged 30 points a game that series, but I didn’t shoot it well. I attacked (of course) and took more than 12 free throws a game. I put it all out there. No one could or did question my effort or intensity in the games. It just wasn’t enough.
So my first time back in front of the press after that series, after that season, after all the trade rumors, after losing my friend, they just wanted to talk about practice. The practices I missed. The practices I was late for. The practices I admit I didn’t always focus on. Not even the games. All they wanted to talk about was practice. They were good at irritating me. I’ll give them that.
So I said what I said in that press conference. And that’s where it all came from. And everything in my life has been like that. People wanting something from me that I couldn’t understand. And they misunderstood me—that where I came from, what I’d been through, made me different. I mean, to me, practice wasn’t that important. Not compared to the games. Not compared to my friends and family.
* * *
This motherfucker right here, writing this book, almost didn’t make it out of middle school. I could have died hustling before I even played a game. I could’ve been in prison for all fifteen years that the judge sentenced me to, stuck shooting hoops in a prison yard during my senior year of high school. I could have lost my sister when she was sick. I could have just given up when no one wanted to recruit me anymore. I could have given in to the negativity that greeted me when I entered the NBA.
Instead I became a state champion, an All-American, the league MVP. I took the 76ers to their first Finals since Julius Irving, the great Doctor J, was playing. And there in that press conference, at that moment, I had agreed, along with the coach and general manager, to stick with the Sixers, with the city of Philadelphia.
Yet all the media wanted to do was talk about practice. It still seems silly to me.
More than who said what and when, more than some missed practices, I think it all goes back to where I came from. What I went through coming up. What I had to overcome, and maybe what I couldn’t overcome. Everyone knows that I fucked up more than my fair share. I’m human, like I said in that press conference. And I ain’t perfect. So I’m telling you here about the beginning. Back home. In jail. At Georgetown with my mentor, my guide, the man who saved my life, Coach John Thompson. And my introduction to the NBA. So maybe you can understand.
To understand me—Allen Iverson, Bubbachuck, AI, the Answer—you need to hear the beginning. With my family. With my friends. In Newport News and Hampton. The seven cities of Virginia. On the Peninsula.
I GROWING UP AND SURVIVING
ONE NANA AND MOM
I was born on June 7, 1975, in Hampton, Virginia. My mom, Ann Iverson, was fifteen. My biological father was in Hartford, Connecticut. And from the beginning, my family didn’t have much.
I grew up on “The Peninsula,” with the Chesapeake Bay on one side and the James River running along the other. Hampton and Newport News are like sister cities there. I lived in both at different times. Really, I can say I grew up in both places. I was a Newport News dude, but I also grew up in Hampton.
But before I get to that, the story really begins in 1971 in Hartford. That’s where my mother had been raised. By then, just twelve years old, she had three younger siblings: Jessie, Steve, and Greg. Her mother—my maternal grandmother—was thirty, raising the four of them by herself. She didn’t want more kids, so she got her tubes tied. When she got home from the procedure, she wasn’t feeling well, and after a while couldn’t even stand straight. My twelve-year-old mom was on the phone with a sheet over her head to keep out the background noise—small house and lots of kids running around—when my Aunt Jessie interrupted her to say their mom didn’t look right. They called an ambulance to come get her. My mom wanted to go to the hospital, but the last words her mother said to her were “No, you watch Jessie and Stevie and Greggy for me.” Her mother never came home. It was an infection from the surgery. My mom could tell you to the penny how much the hospital gave as compensation: $3,818.18.
“Don’t forget the eighteen cents,” she would say.
My mom and her siblings were now motherless, but they were blessed to have a saint of a grandmother (my great-grandmother), whose name was Ethel Mitchell—“Nana” to all of us. Nana agreed to raise those four grandkids. Story goes that Nana’s husband had enough with raising kids. So Nana was on her own.
After a couple of years, Nana started thinking about a change. My teenage mom was playing basketball then. (She said she had her coach telling her to “slow down and pass the ball.” Sounds familiar.) She was also finding trouble—thirty-eight fights, she counted. After the last one, Nana was done. The family had moved to Connecticut years before, but she was originally from Virginia and still had family there. Once she saw a future raising those four grandchildren, and looked out her window at a Hartford neighborhood she didn’t really like anyway, she decided to move back home. And maybe it had something to do with me too.
See, 1974 came, and Nana had already been taking care of my mom and the others for a little while. My mom was fifteen by then. She had been dating Allen Broughton for a couple years. Broughton was a star basketball player, just one year older than my mom. (He was only 5'5", but they said he played bigger than his size. Also sounds familiar.) All I know is that by the time the family moved to Virginia, my mom was pregnant. They made it to Virginia in time to enroll her into high school—at Bethel, where I’d end up winning a few games. That January, she ran the point, five months pregnant with me. Of course, I don’t remember that!
* * *
So as I said, I was born June 7 of that year, 1975. When I was born, my mom says she knew after taking just one look at me—she saw my long arms and immediately said I’d be a basketball player. She just knew. And whatever anyone can say about my mom, she believed in me that day, and every day after that. I only made it where I made it because of her. Because of her belief in me.
Not long after I was born, I got the name everyone called me. You may know me by “AI” or “the Answer,” but all that came later. Everyone in the family was trying to come up with a nickname for my baby self—“What are we going to call Allen?”—because in my family your name wasn’t necessarily what you got called. For instance, my mom was “Juicy,” and her sister was “Lil Bit.” That’s just how it was. So story goes that two uncles up in Connecticut were arguing over what my nickname would be. One uncle was called Bubba and the other was Chuck. Well, they got to arguing that I should get one of their nicknames as my own, and my mom said, “You know what, you both can be right. Bubbachuck.” And so that’s what it was from that day forward. Everybody called me Bubbachuck, sometimes just “Bubba,” or mostly just “Chuck.” You watch my games from when I was a kid, even the announcers called me that. And to this day, among my family, my friends, and when I go home, it’s “Bubbachuck.”
My first memories are from living with Nana on Jordan Drive in Hampton, in the Aberdeen section of town. She had a little one-story house with vinyl siding, set back from a creek. I don’t remember it all of course, those early years. But I do remember it being crowded. It’s hard to say how many of us there were. It had two bedrooms. We made room for ten or twelve people depending on the time. There was Nana; there was my mom; her little sister, Jessie; her two brothers, Stevie and Greg; and then me, of course. Others came and went. We didn’t have a lot of money either. Now, that ain’t no excuse for anything. It’s just how it was. Mom was still a kid then. Looking back, I can see that. So I was raised by the whole family.
