his stubbornness and trouble making will overshadow any team he plays for.

Huh?

Slate sometimes loses me with their nonsense.

AI is
a good guy
loyal to the city where he played(Philly)
great athlete
good teammate ( nobody played harder in that loser olympic team and he never spoke ill of his underperforming team mates)
great warrior
good husband- (despite in the sports thread below, where Gomez wants to compare him to KOBE, I remind u, Allen never raped a 19 year old, he is married to his high school sweet heart)
great father
great son
great person- just ask his homies in Virginia who he never abandoned!!!

Kobe hates a superstar teammate like he hated Shaq and never admitts he idolizes the great Michael Jordan even if he imitates him - Allen will love to have a great teammate just watch him and Carmelo click, hell Carmelo idolizes the guy, and he always says he looks up to jordan..

Bottom line, white folks ( the media) dont like him cuz they think he is a thug for his little run in with the law when he was a kid in Virginia and got into some beef in a bowling alley. They hate him for smoking weed and yeah he pulled a gun on a mother who tried to mess with his wife. Hell I would have to.

The media is always wishing ill on Allen and wanting him to fail, but he always proves them wrong.

Not since the great Dr J have I ever loved a player more than AI (the Answer).

"mean blond gazelles". *that* is good writing.

Don't get me wrong. I love and believe in Allen Iverson. He's the reason I ran down South Street screaming.

We're hoping he'll provoke the same reaction here, Angela.

Angela, check out this appreciation of AI from Bill Simmons. Now that Ralph Wiley is gone, Bill is the best hoops writer out there.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/061213

This has nothing to do with the City Light's racist neglect expose we've been waiting for.

There hasn't been any good commentary on Philly sports since Bill Lyon retired.

Bill Conlin maybe but only when he's writing about the Phillies.

as someone from hampton, virginia (ai's hometown), i just want to clarify that it was hardly just "beef" that ai was involved in at that bowling alley, it was a full-on brawl/riot (involving thrown chairs and pregnant women). hardly just a "kids will be kids" situation.

i couldn't stand ai after that, since he had all sorts of favors done for him just because he could dribble a ball, but i have to admit he's grown on me over the years. i think despite his being a little rough around the edges he's going to do great things with 'melo, shutting up at least a few of his haters. at least that's my hope.

Deadspin has a roundup of tributes to Iverson:

http://www.deadspin.com/sports/nba/iverson-the-day-after-223176.php

I'm heading down to see him play Brandon Roy and the Blazers in Portland on Jan 14th (Sunday) and I think everyone should come.

One of the biggest regrets of my life is missing the Georgetown/St. John's game at Madison Square Garden in Iverson's (and my) freshman year of college (I was at NYU), when he schooled Felipe Lopez (St. John's great hope) so badly that Lopez never recovered.

I was desperately hoping (though it was never on the cards) that the Trail Blazers would acquire The Answer, just to watch the full-scale nervous breakdown it would cause in the Portland sports press.