Settling the Score

PHILADELPHIA —  Allen Iverson shares at least one trait with Michael Jordan. The kid has a fabulous memory.

Jordan always kept score on the court, remembering the player who beat him off the dribble 10 years ago or the coach who refused to double-team him. Now that Iverson is leading the NBA in scoring and carrying the Philadelphia 76ers to their best start in nearly a decade, he remembers all those who disrespected him.

He knows Charles Barkley and Karl Malone are talking about him when they use the word “knucklehead.” Hecklers call him punk, jailbird, ball hog and Barkley’s pet name for him--Allen “Me, Myself and Iverson.”

The cheap shots won’t be forgotten. Turns out Iverson wasn’t just indulging himself with between-the-legs, behind-the-back showmanship and 40-point scoring outbursts in his first two years in the league.

Turns out he’s been keeping score.

“If I win that scoring title, do you know how many people are going to be mad that I did that?” Iverson said. “People don’t want that for me. And the way I look at it, even if I go with a clean slate, don’t get in any trouble, win the scoring title and we have a great season and go to the playoffs and make noise, they’ll still be hesitant to market Allen Iverson.”

Iverson, it seems, has turned his journey from behind bars to No. 1 draft pick to fascinating, yet polarizing basketball star into a personal grudge match. He remembers everyone who ever talked down to him, tried to hold him back or judge him on his past and appearance--the ostentatious jewelry, tattoos, braided corn rows and do-rag.

“I want people to say--behind closed doors if they have to--’That’s the best player in the NBA,”’ Iverson said. “That’s the type of effect that I want to have on this league.”

The first month of the NBA season belonged to the 23-year-old Iverson, who was finally recognized for something positive when he was named player of the month. For the first time since college, Iverson knows what it’s like to be the dominant player on a winning team instead of a sideshow.

“That meant a lot,” said Iverson, who was averaging 28.8 points a game going into the weekend. “It really felt like I was turning the corner, for myself, looking at it through my own eyes. I’m like, ‘Man, you know, they recognized me for something GOOD.’ And it felt good.”

He’s come a long way since being booed at All-Star weekend in Cleveland his rookie year for comments he believes to this day were taken out of context. Asked earlier that season if he respected Jordan, Iverson says he replied, “I’m not going to respect anybody on the basketball court.” When Iverson saw the quote in print and heard it on the air, the last four words had been dropped.

Iverson was the MVP of the rookie game, only to be heckled with the NBA’s 50 greatest players of all time sitting courtside--Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson.

Iverson was distraught. But not many people know what happened after he left the court and picked up his trophy. He handed it to a team official who dropped it, making a huge chip in the base.

“Get it fixed,” Iverson pleaded. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”

Iverson is clearly a different player now. Is he a different person?

His family says his personal life is more settled than ever. His coach, Larry Brown, says he understands the game better and has better players around him.

“I think Allen always wants to do the right thing,” said Brown, who has smoothed over early differences with Iverson. “He listens to everybody. He’s just growing up, becoming more responsible.”

Brown moved Iverson from point guard to off-guard this year, and he’s thriving in the role. His tendency to showboat has faded, replaced by a keener notion for getting open and passing. The result is the Sixers’ best start since the 1990-91 season and an early push for their second playoff appearance this decade.

“Iverson learned that he can’t do it all by himself,” Chicago’s Ron Harper said. “I think that he sees the fun part is if your team does good, you do good, too.”

One of the most intriguing aspects of Iverson is that he refuses to forget the past while asking others to do so.

To him, the past is a very real part of the man he has become. To others, it is still blotted with unseemly mistakes--the four months he spent in jail over a bowling-alley brawl he says did not involve him; an arrest on drug charges just after his rookie season; and countless betrayals and missteps by childhood friends he says he will never renounce.

“I don’t want the bad-boy image in the league. I don’t want to be that person, because I’m not,” he said.

“You know, it’s just a whole media thing,” he said. “It’s, ‘OK, we’re going to make him the bad boy of the NBA because he made mistakes in his life.’ And people are driving it, and driving it and driving it into the ground. It’s starting to get old now. Soon, they’re not going to be able to keep writing about negative things, especially if I’m not doing anything negative.”