Chapter 140: The Unparalleled Iverson 2
V------ry (victory) Iverson scores, 76ers lose. This has been a stereotype for a long time, and this is the best reason for those who accuse Iverson of selfishness, but no one can deny Iverson's obsession with winning, and the history of winning and losing with high scores is gone!
w------ (woman) Iverson met a great woman in his life, and that was his mother, Anna Iverson. She had to work 14 hours a day to maintain a home and prevent Iverson from going astray. This is how she pulled Iverson step by step, Iverson couldn't tolerate anyone's disrespect for his mother, and he could even fire him without saying a word because of the arrogance of the famous agent Falk to his mother, and I am afraid that no one in the NBA can stand out from filial piety.
The rookies of ------'96 were recognized as the best in 10 years, including Kobe, Camby, and Marbury, but because of their frivolous personalities, they were known as the Unknown Generation, and Iverson was one of them. It has been proven that the rookies of that class have taken the lead in their respective teams and have successfully taken over the baton from Jordan and Malone. The future of the NBA belongs to them, to Iverson!
The case of Y------Young (young man) Iverson is a legend in itself, a black boy who came out of the slums and became a superstar on his own. He is already an idol worshipped by countless young people, and he is also the goal of those young people living in poverty. He explained the meaning of the American Dream to all young people.
Z------zilch (normal person) and Iverson standing together, can you feel like he's a basketball player? He feels like a big brother playing on the next court. It is this height close to normal that brings him high popularity, which is also an important reason why his affinity is incomparable to Kobe Bryant and O'Neal!
Yu Yang sighed to himself: "I didn't expect that 26 letters can summarize Iverson vividly, I can't imagine what I will see next." Finally, here's the point:
Iverson comes from a single-parent family, and his mother, Anne, gave birth to him when he was 15 years old, and Anne never married, meaning that Iverson and his two younger sisters were never treated fairly in society from the beginning. Iverson's biological father never had any meaning in his life. He lived in Connecticut until Iverson was born, and he didn't pay a penny for Iverson's life until he went to prison for murdering his own girlfriend. He had only met Iverson three times.
Memories of Iverson's entire childhood may have been nothing more than sewage and the smile of his mother, who lived on a sewer pipe in Hampton, Virginia. Sewage pipes often burst, leaving the Iverson family completely flooded with sewage from the entire city.
The stench of receding sewage can permeate his home for weeks, making his two younger sisters sick frequently, Anne's 18-hour work day is not enough to support the family, and their water and electricity services are often cut off due to non-payment, so Iverson's sick sister can never receive proper medical treatment, and the family has to face more than just food and clothing. It's the most basic possibility of survival.
But Anne was constantly filling the family with joy and love in all sorts of ways, and Iverson said of her mother years later: "She did everything she could!" ”
Anne's boyfriend, Michael. Freeman was Iverson's de facto father, and he spent half of his life in prison. A car accident in 1991 left Freeman unemployed in order to sustain the family, which was on the verge of collapse. In desperation, Freeman began selling drugs until he remained incarcerated in Newport Virginia, where Iverson spent four months in 1993.
No one thinks drug trafficking is forgivable, but Freeman's argument in court tells the story of the living conditions of the black population at the bottom of the American population: "I didn't buy a Cadillac or a diamond, I just paid my bills." "This bill definitely includes Iverson, who hasn't started making money with basketball yet.
Iverson was always proud of his father, who was serving a prison sentence. "He didn't rob anyone, he just went out of his way to feed his family. You can never imagine how much he loves his home, and if he comes out of prison to find that he is the only one left in the house, he will kill himself immediately. ”
Iverson visited Freeman in prison in 1996 and found that his clothes and shoes were in tatters. He immediately took off his basketball shoes and handed them to Freeman. The first thing Iverson did when he walked home barefoot that day was to hug his mother and cry.
Iverson recalls his childhood: "When I came home, there was no electricity, no food, sometimes no water, sometimes there was water, but there was never hot water. The room smelled of rot forever, and the walls were damp and moldy, but I didn't think it was hell, and I believed that heaven would be nothing more than that when I saw my mother smiling as she walked over. Most NBA players are in a similar situation to Iverson, for whom the only bargaining chip to escape from the bottom is their God-given basketball talent.
Anne first discovered Iverson's talent, and despite his small size, he had a strong congenital bouncing, so she asked Iverson to start basketball. But Iverson felt that basketball was a bit of a sissy, he hated basketball and loved football.
When Anna used half of her life savings to buy Iverson a pair of basketball shoes, Iverson started basketball that day. Anne told him, "You have to give everything for basketball, and this is the only chance to change the way your life is." This phrase played a crucial role in Iverson's later career, and the emaciated Iverson told himself in the NBA against all the brawny men: "This guy is trying to take away everything I have now, trying to throw me back into that house built on a sewer." This always made him fight with anger.
There's also an episode of Iverson's imprisonment, and I think it's definitely inspiring: There's no sunny story in Iverson's life, especially in Virginia, which has a "fine tradition" of racism. Iverson's imprisonment in 1993 continues to influence the league's perception of him and, of course, the world.