I grew up a Philadelphia sports fan. While I wasn’t a huge basketball fan, I remember Allen Iversen (the original AI) as a dynamic and exciting player to watch. I was naive back then. I took the media report of Iversons infamous “Practice?!!” press conference at face value. There really was only one version of the truth in those days. It wasn’t like I disliked Iverson for it, I just took it as another professional athlete acting like a professional athlete. This was the area of the NBA cracking down on the influence of “thug culture”. AI was a prominent face of that culture.
I hope I know better now. I am thankful for the documentaries like Untold: Malice at the Palace that sheds a very different light on the player vs. fan altercation that happened in Detroit. I am also thankful for Hanif Abdurraqib’s essay from which I took this post’s title. Iverson and Jorden represented two types of black players in the NBA; one that was acceptable and one that was not. It is well worth your time to read it.
I do my best to keep my eyes open to look beyond the headlines to what is really happening. To question the narrative that I am being fed. I hope you will do the same.