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It remains one of the most iconic moments in Philadelphia 76ers’ franchise history: 1:19 showing in overtime, down 2 points, and Allen Iverson open on the right wing. He caught the ball, flashed his trademark cross-over, then stepped over Tyronn Lue.
Swish. Crowd silenced. The Sixers would go on win Game 1 of the 2001 NBA Finals but it was Iverson’s only victory in the series. And it turned out to be his only trip to the championship round. But what he did to Lue on that ankle-breaking 3-pointer lives on in NBA folklore, with the play going viral every year on June 6. Surprisingly, Iverson doesn’t love seeing the replays.
The Hall of Famer recently jumped in an ice bath to talk about it on Cold As Balls, from Kevin Hart’s Laugh Out Loud. Their 15-minute conversation covered a wide range of important topics, including Iverson stepping over Lue.
“No. I was so embarrassed, man,” when asked if he liked seeing the replay. “That s*** was terrible. That’s my guy, man.”
While the relationship started on bad terms, Iverson and Lue became really good friends as time went on. The buzzworthy play turned into a bonding moment since neither one could escape it.
“We became really good friends after that,” Lue told ESPN in 2016. “Like, after the Finals, probably four or five years after, we hated each other. But then after the careers went along, we became pretty close and had a good bond. He’s really a good friend of mine.”
Iverson on Redeem Team Snub: ‘It Bothered Me’
Iverson was part of the 2004 Olympic Team that failed to bring home the gold medal. They won bronze in Athens, but the shocking third-place finish sparked a seismic shift in the way the United States attacked future Olympics. The Netflix documentary “Redeem Team” provides an expert account of their climb back up to the mountain top.
But Iverson was left off the 2008 squad that struck gold and restored American pride. The Sixers legend told Hart that he wanted to play for the so-called Redeem Team (starring Kobe Bryant), but never got an invitation. The snub bothered him deep down at the time.
“Obviously, you think if you put together a bunch of pros, obviously you’re supposed to beat any team you put out there on the floor, but that wasn’t the case obviously,” Iverson said. “That summer everything started happening overseas, so me and Tim Duncan were the only ones who agreed to go. I wanted to go but I wasn’t invited and then they put together the team that ended up winning.
“It was out of my control and I definitely didn’t want to make a big deal about it, out of respect to the guys they did choose. Those were my guys, you know what I mean? And I rooted for them to the end, but deep down it bothered me. It hurt.”
Hard Truth on 2 Misunderstood Incidents
Perhaps the most memorable non-Lue moment in Iverson’s career was something that happened off the court. Yes, the infamous practice rant. What many people forget about the viral clip — he says the word practice more than 20 times — is that Iverson was in mourning.
His best friend, Rahsaan Langeford, had been shot and killed seven months earlier. And the trial of the man accused of committing the murder started a few days before the press conference. He was hurting and lost at sea.
“My thing was if anybody had any type of sense, like look at him as a player,” Iverson told Hart. “How could you become everything that I am as a basketball player if I didn’t practice? My best friend has just got killed. They don’t know what we going through off the court.”
The other eye-opening reality for Iverson occurred when the Sixers sent their superstar guard packing to Denver. The trade rumors had been percolating publicly for weeks, although not necessarily with Iverson’s approval. The process woke him up to the fact that the NBA is a business.
“That’s when I knew it wasn’t just about what I was doing on the basketball court,” Iverson said. “That’s when I realized it was a business and they had to do what was best for the organization. And me putting a black cloud over it wasn’t helping.”
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