Do you know what Allen Iverson thought on practice? Let us know all what AI thought about this aspect of sport
Allen Iverson the legendary Philadelphia 76ers player often reached the headlines and not always for the best reasons. His famous 2002 rant on practice where he had uttered the word practice a total of 22 times, is one such time when the crowd went in a frenzy and his words are still referenced to, today.
“We talking bout a practice. Not a game. Not a game…” and it wasn’t until 2013 until Iverson’s retirement did we get a proper explanation from the player. Many thought he had just been hysterical, many assumed he was drunk and many opined it was just true to the player’s crass nature. But the story was something much deeper and misunderstood.
This famous rant that had the crowds questioning many things, took place in a press conference on May 7, 2002. However, this press conference had been called for something very different.
There had been a prior disagreement between the Philadelphia 76ers coach Larry Brown and the player Iverson, and whether he would continue as a team member or would be traded off. By the end of the conference, it was decided that both would indeed stay on for another year at least, however, it spun off to a much bigger headline – Allen Iverson’s take on the practice.
The disagreement between the two, we presume was also due to Iverson missing out on practice as we take from his rant on practice. In this very conference, the player’s dedication to practice was questioned, and the player had gotten defensive explaining the issue was much bigger.
If someone had opined Allen doesn’t practice, it could have been from even just one practice and not every practice that went down that year. His rant had been long and it tried to get his message out there, which did ring loud and clear years down the line. These were the legendary words, “It’s a practice… Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it’s my last”
An attendee at the conference accounts, the player indeed had been drunk and could have easily gotten himself out of the mess had he not been so.
But where was the player coming from when he went about practice for minutes? It hadn’t just been a drunken ramble. He later at his retirement explained how terrible the year had been for him.
The fact that he had lost his dearest friend Rahsaan Langford due to a mishap where he had been gunned down and shot to death. The fact that the player had no space to sit and mourn over his loss and was having to sit and explain for missing out on practice when he felt he was at his rock-bottom, reasonably didn’t sit with him. Hence resulting in some of the most quoted lines from the player.
The player had explained that he wasn’t someone who’d miss out on practices a lot. And despite the immense grief that had him down, he never tried to mess with a game he was playing, when it truly mattered. And indeed even if the team didn’t end up performing their best that year, Iverson kept his winning records in order. And that is the take on the controversial rant of Allen Iverson on practice.
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