Allen Iverson is All Grown Up

A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues, creative paginator and computer genius, Donnell Harvey, asked me a question that made us both laugh heartily - and later - talk seriously.

Harvey asked me, "Hey Eric, when are you going to write a column giving Allen Iverson some props?"

We both burst out in laughter, because Harvey knows firsthand from laying out my columns for the past few years that Iverson hasn't been what I would call one of my favorite basketball players in the NBA.

At any rate, I sat down with Harvey and shared a snippet of my most current feelings on Iverson, which, I promised, would be shared with the entire world when I wrote the column.

Now that I've gotten that long-winded diatribe out of my system, let me get down to doing what I get paid to do.
First of all, I’ve always told my children, that when they do wrong, they will get punished by me accordingly, but I also tell them that when they do well, they will most certainly be rewarded as well.

Parenting advice aside, having said that, I have to give Iverson credit for finally growing up and maturing into the person the public sees today. Constant drama has a way of making a person change (I know that lesson from firsthand experience myself, but that's a story for another day).

At any rate, I'm not ashamed to admit that I've ripped Iverson on more than one occasion for several of his perplexing incidents and selfish acts, but I call things like I see it - and the way I see Iverson now is the polar opposite of how I viewed him when he first came into the league as a talented but severely immature 20-year-old who thought he knew it all.

I don’t know whether the departure of Hall of Fame head coach, Larry Brown following the 2002 season, with whom Iverson had a bewildering love-hate relationship with, caused a change in Iverson’s way of thinking or whether it was some of the aforementioned personal drama or just plain, old, growing up, but Iverson has been a totally different public figure the last couple of seasons; contrasting the militant one who entered the league with a chip the size of Mount Rushmore on his shoulders.