Thursday, December 06, 2007

In the movie Brown Sugar, Syd (played by the lovely Ms. Sanaa Lathan), continually asks Dre (played by the ambiguously ghey Taye Diggs), "when was the first time you fell in love with hip hop". I must admit, that line was corny and by the time the end of the movie came, I was sick of it. But last night, after watching Allen Iverson's 51 point performance against the Los Angeles Lakers, I started thinking about the first time I fell in love with Allen Iverson's game.

It was Allen Iverson's second year and they were playing the Toronto Raptors. Allen had already established himself as one of the top players in the NBA during his rookie year, and he continued to do the same in his second year. At the time, Toronto was led by third year player Damon Stoudamire and second year player Marcus Camby who had been taken 2nd in the NBA draft after Allen Iverson. So this matchup was already billed as yet another showdown between the top two draft pics of that 1996 draft. But at one point in the game, Allen Iverson showed why he was clearly head and shoulders above Camby (literally). His teammate Eric Snow took a shot from the left side of the floor and missed. Once he missed, the 6'11 Marcus Camby was under the basket seemingly poised for the rebound. Out of nowhere, the 6'1 Allen Iverson(he's listed at that height, but anyone who has ever seen Iverson in person knows he's closer to 5'10) jumps up and over Camby's back, dunks the ball with one hand, then hangs on the rim, while his crotch is seemingly all in the face of Camby. At one point after the dunk is over, Camby turns around and looks up at Iverson as if to say, what the f*ck? A man that small isn't supposed to be able to dunk during the game like that, let alone over a man who is a foot taller. I've seen better, more fancy dunks by Iverson, but I had never seen him do one in that context and over someone. I had also seen Iverson play in high school and in college, so I already knew he was a fantastic player, but that year is when I fell in love with his game. You can see the dunk live right here.

So with all that being said, last night, Allen Iverson gave me yet another reason to love him. Ironically, Marcus Camby is now his teammate, and he and the rest of the squad ended up losing to Kobe and the Lakers. Kobe was returning to Denver, Colorado which just so happened to be the scene of his alleged rape a few years back, so there were all kinds of subplots here. But Iverson was the star. He scored from the outside, he scored inside, he went over, around and by people with ease, and for three quarters he was in the proverbial zone. Through 3 quarters of basketball, he had 49 points, and the Denver Nuggets were winning. Of course, Allen had to ruin my lovefest in the fourth quarter by only scoring two points, and then allowing Kobe to just flat out take over and win the game. But I am going to act like I didn't see that part of the game and I am going to focus on Allen's brilliance. He is 32 now, which in basketball years, is the equivalent of being about 45, so I don't know how much longer he'll be able to summon that type of dominance(even if it was only for 3 quarters). But I definitely appreciated it.

And yes every now and then I will write an entry that is entirely about sports, potentially alienating all of my readers. Its worth it though.

The Answer (instrumental) - Foreign Exchange

5 comments:

BewRadley said...

i aint mad about the all sports entry.

Unknown said...

i totally skimmed this entry. lol

Miss Black River said...

Allen is proof that nothing in the world takes the place of persistence.

In other basketball news...Georgetown is still undefeated. Beat Alabama last night. I'll admit it was not our best showing, but a W nonetheless.

£ said...

i like sports, i'm just not well versed enough to write about it

and AI is a beast. I'm still mad he's not here any longer.

Janelle said...

I read this entry like the adults in the Charlie Brown cartoon read it out loud. "Wah wah wah love wah wah wah wah Allen Inverson wah wah wah wah wah wah. The end."

hahahahahahaha
while I can't stand your subject matter its still a good entry. You almost made me like him. Almost. hahaha