The educated elite of our country

Allen Iverson is a phenomenally talented basketball player. His personal skills are almost unmatched. He can do things with a basketball that very, very few people on earth can do. In fact, there are really very few things he can't do. 1 is use the English language. The other...well, let's hear it from his own lips.



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If Coach tells you that I missed practice, then that's that. I may have missed one practice this year but if somebody says he missed one practice of all the practices this year, then that's enough to get a whole lot started. I told Coach Brown that you don't have to give the people of Philadelphia a reason to think about trading me or anything like that. If you trade somebody, you trade them to make the team better...simple as that. I'm cool with that. I'm all about that. The people in Philadelphia deserve to have a winner. It's simple as that. It goes further than that ... If I can't practice, I can't practice. It is as simple as that. It ain't about that at all. It's easy to sum it up if you're just talking about practice. We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we're talking about practice. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about practice. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it's my last but we're talking about practice man. How silly is that? ... Now I know that I'm supposed to lead by example and all that but I'm not shoving that aside like it don't mean anything. I know it's important, I honestly do but we're talking about practice. We're talking about practice man. We're talking about practice. We're talking about practice. We're not talking about the game. We're talking about practice. When you come to the arena, and you see me play, you've seen me play right, you've seen me give everything I've got, but we're talking about practice right now. ... Hey I hear you, it's funny to me too, hey it's strange to me too but we're talking about practice man, we're not even talking about the game, when it actually matters, we're talking about practice ... How the hell can I make my teammates better by practicing?[3]
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- Allen Iverson at a press conference on May 8 , 2002
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He said "practice" more times than he's actually practiced.
"Coach Larry Brown, speaking to reporters the next day



This is the epitome of a team player. I will lead by the example of not practicing. I will lead by not helping other guys improve. I will lead by not building team chemistry.

Maybe it's mean, but...6 years later I am still laughing.