Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
Basketball Hall of Famer Allen Iverson had an incredible NBA career that saw him win the scoring title four times and make the all-star game 11 times. There’s no doubt that the No. 1 overall pick in the 1996 NBA Draft lived up to the hype and then some. However, he does have one regret from his career. Iverson recently sat down with sports personality Stephen A. Smith and shared what his one regret is. “I didn’t buy, for whatever reason, maybe it was immaturity. That’s the only thing I can think of. I didn’t buy what coach [Larry] Brown was selling in the beginning,” Allen Iverson said. “That’s the only thing I regret in my career. “Because you could see the pendulum swinging from the time I got into the league and from the time he came and once I bought into it how my career changed.” Larry Brown’s first season as the 76ers head coach was in 1997-98, Iverson’s second year in the league. The undersized guard averaged 22.0 points and 6.2 assists per game that year, but he wasn’t fully bought in to Brown’s system. “I had all the athletic ability in the world. I could do everything. I was faster than everybody on the basketball court. I could jump high. But I always use the John Stockton analogy, Steve Nash. They thought the game,” Allen Iverson said. “John Stockton didn’t have to be fast. He didn’t have to be quick; he didn’t have to jump high. He didn’t have to be flashy. He just got it done at the highest level. “And once I implemented that into my game and started to think the game instead of just running around fast all the time… once I learned that from coach Brown and started to just listen to him and realize that he wanted the same thing that I wanted, it was all the same goal, that’s when everything changed for me." Iverson went on to make the all-star game for the first time in 2000 and would make it 11 straight seasons in total. As for Larry Brown, he coached the 76ers from 1997-2003. Iverson is thankful it didn’t take him long to jump on board with Brown’s message. “It wasn’t that long before I bought in. When I look at top-75 all-time, I mean that speaks for itself,” he said. “There’s been a lot of dudes to play this game. And I was told I was too small; I was told that I couldn’t play in the NBA with my style of play. And I just think that I was reckless in the beginning and was still the Rookie of the Year with not knowing how to play on an NBA level. “I just felt that it was such a mismatch for me because you had to play me 1-on-1. And then all of a sudden, four scoring titles later, the zone is coming back into the league. But once he taught me how to think the game, that’s when I became who I ultimately became.”
