PHILADELPHIA – Maybe Allen Iverson is right: Nobody can guard him one on one. But what happens when they double him, triple him, hack him, scratch him, elbow him, butt him to the floor, all the while whispering threats and taunts in his ear?
He shoots 4-for-15 and his Sixers have no chance – one time.
What happens the next time? The answer – which is what they call Iverson because all questions on guarding him seemed silly – will come tonight in Game 3 (TBS, 6:30) of this bruising series between the Sixers and Magic.
Have the suddenly brutish Magic found a remedy to the league’s most prolific scorer? Or was Tuesday’s Game 2 in which a battered Iverson scored only 13 points after 30 in Game 1 merely a case of the Magic can’t losing both at home?
At practice yesterday, the Sixers hardly seemed flustered by Chuck Daly’s resorting to his old tactic of ”if you can’t beat him, beat him up.” Of course, there was the rallying call.
”We have to protect our little guy,” said Rick Mahorn, Daly’s old enforcer with the Bad Boy Pistons.
”If they’re gonna hit him,” Sixers coach Larry Brown said, ”we’re gonna hit them. They’re getting a lot of cheap shots on him. Physical play is one thing, but knocking him down is another. We have tough guys on our team. We can’t let them keep taking cheap shots on him.”
In the end it will come down to Iverson, whether the one-trick Sixers – a team of Iverson and role players and rebounders and defenders, built masterfully by Brown – will score the upset. In many ways, this is a defining moment for him. Michael Jordan endured a similar early career test – also led by Coach Daly – when the league discovered it couldn’t stay with him and tried to bully him.
The Magic – as threatening as their home theme park’s Small World – felt strong after Tuesday’s 79-68 win. Suddenly, they had grown muscles. Even Penny Hardaway – the delicate star with the tender core, dented just as easily by elbows as harsh words – was talking trash and acting the tough guy.
”The Allen Iverson stuff in the media about no one can guard him … we just tried to take challenge and come at him a little bit harder,” Hardaway said.
Hardaway made it a personal challenge to stop Iverson after Game 1. Iverson said cooly, ”Bring it on.”
To Hardaway’s credit, he did, acting as the doubler to Darrell Armstrong’s defense. But something says Iverson won’t go shy now, especially with Game 3 along Broad Street, which seems to be forever stained black and blue.
Not Iverson. Look at him, even at barely six feet, 160 pounds. Sometimes the cover depicts the book. The tattoos, the braids, the scars – both physical and emotional, stemming from a childhood in the streets; they are not a costume of machismo.
In Philly, they boast Iverson has changed, that he has put some distance with the lifestyle that has clouded his basketball brilliance. But wouldn’t want him to change entirely. A little bit of thug is good when dealing with the Magic’s tactics. In Iverson’s old neighborhood, being intimidated is being weak.
So it was no surprise when he smiled a crooked smile at the notion of physical play. ”That’s a part of the game,” he said. ”I enjoy it. If they take a shot at me, I smile and keep going … I guess they’re trying to send me a message. But I’ve been dealing with that all year. Guys have been bumping me and knocking me down. I get right back up.
”It’s no big deal. It don’t put any fear in my heart.”