I imagine the rivalry between Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes was only a little bit about wrestling and a lot about the fantasy of hard work seeing a triumph over flash. Dusty Rhodes wasn’t built like a bodybuilder. He was built like a man who you might live next to, and see mowing the lawn on a Sunday morning. He sold himself as a plumber’s son, a part of the working-class America who kept his adornments modest by comparison to his peers. Dusty Rhodes was more of an idea than a wrestler. The American Dream that could still be touched by anyone who just worked hard enough. Nestled up next to Flair, sold as the golden boy, born with a silver spoon and reaping the benefits of a hardened, steroid-enhanced body, the battles became that of someone fighting for the people against someone fighting for his own, gold-drenched legacy. In promos, Dusty Rhodes would scream at Flair about how he was going to defeat him in the name of blue-collar Americans everywhere, and Flair, on a split screen, would laugh, flip his blonde hair, and let it fall perfectly back into place.
The fundamental difference between Rhodes and Flair that sat in the middle of their feud is a difference that also sat between LL Cool J and Kool Moe Dee during their near-decade battle with each other: a different understanding of what the people need. Moe Dee, like Rhodes, was interested in selling the people a living dream, while Flair and LL were more interested in selling the possibility of dreaming larger. The idea of making yourself anything, as large as you want to be, so that someone might think twice before coming for you. Moe Dee thought that he could pick LL apart by mocking his muscles, his appearance, the consistent licking of his lips. This scored some direct hits, sure. But LL just covered his chest in bigger chains, came back with bigger muscles, became loved by more of the masses. This idea was simple: there is no victory like fame. Popularity so heavy that no one can take it from you, even if they tried. It didn’t matter if Ric Flair lost to Dusty Rhodes in the ring if he made people believe that he would never lose to him in life.
I grew up too poor to admire the fantasy of the slow-rise of the working class. I admire the things I could see when I closed my eyes, always a bit out of reach. When I started making my own money, I bought all of the sneakers I saw rappers wearing in their videos because it seemed like a way to separate myself from the times I opened an empty refrigerator. Ric Flair wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but none of the best MCs were. The only way to build yourself into something unstoppable is to become intimate with all of that which would otherwise attempt to stop you where you stand. Hunger is not glamorous, but under the bright lights, far removed from its grasp, it is a currency. A thing you know well enough to not desire a return to.
The greatest Ric Flair promo is called “His Kingdom.” In it, he directly addresses Lex Luger, who was challenging him for his heavyweight title. The promo is vintage Flair, starting out tense, but calm, and then slowly losing his cool as the promo goes on, eventually stripping out of his expensive jacket, loosening his expensive tie, and tearing off his expensive sunglasses. The promo hits a climax with about one minute left, when Flair decides to rip off a bandage that was covering a wound on his head. As his eyes bulge and the veins pop out of his forehead, blood lightly begins to descend from the wound, making a slow journey down the front of his face. It was the height of his performance as Ric Flair, who walked away from a plane crash and ran into the ring still broken. Who never talks about facing death, who maybe before would be ashamed to show his own blood, who maybe would be ashamed to show the damage done to his stunning and flawless image. And as he hit fever pitch, his eyebrows raised and holding back the small river of blood from falling into his eye, he yells, staring into the camera, “No one is going to determine my destiny in this sport but me. So, pal, either bury me, or do nothing at all.”
And he spun and walked away, carried through a crowd once again, on the back of the realest shit he ever wrote.
It Rained In Ohio On The Night Allen Iverson Hit Michael Jordan With A Crossover
At least this is how I remember it and so, then, this is what I need you to believe with me. Memory is a funny thing, though. Memory is a funny thing. Here is one way that memory is funny, though you may not laugh: I don’t remember Michael Jordan inspiring any of the kids on my block to be a basketball player. Some of this was surely age—many of us getting to experience him most clearly after he returned from his first retirement, where he was still spectacular, but existed in a different way than he did before. His swagger was much more cerebral, as opposed to the explicit gold-chain, dunk from the free-throw line brand. Upon his first return, from the mid-’90s until the late ’90s, it could be argued that he was at his best. Deadly from mid-range, and with an improved feel for the game, he was both unstoppable and fiercely clutch, playing with a chip on his shoulder larger than the one he had when he left. This was, perhaps, the most fascinating part. He had already won the championships that eluded him. He had already had a two-act career that, for most, would have been good enough. But in his third act, he was most ferocious. Seemingly most dedicated to staring down the clock and pushing back against age.
This is how we found Michael Jordan at the top of the key in 1996, guarding Allen Iverson, then a rookie from Georgetown University. Iverson hadn’t yet grown out his soon-to-be signature cornrows, and was several tattoos short of where he would end his career. He hadn’t yet harnessed all of his abilities yet, but throughout his rookie season, he showed the exciting, franchise-saving ability that made him a #1 overall pick the previous summer in an overwhelmingly stacked NBA draft, one of the best of the modern era. And at the top of the key, on what I remember to be a rainy night in Columbus, he faced his idol. Who he stood next to on the court before tip-off that night and stared at, like he was watching the sun from a closer distance than anyone had ever seen it before.
The thing about a crossover is that, perhaps more than any other signature dribble move, it relies on trust: a defender willing to trust you, and what they understand about you, and your willingness to deceive them. It is a basic dribble move, one that existed in several forms before Allen Iverson entered the national conversation. Dwayne Washington, while playing at Syracuse in the 1980s, perfected the original crossover: a small switching of direction, the body moving with the ball, just long enough to send a defender briefly off-balance. In the ’90s, Tim Hardaway introduced the Killer Crossover, a more exaggerated version of the original, relying on a wide step in the opposite direction and a head-fake, before jerking back in the direction away from the defender. Allen Iverson was the master of the final iteration of the move, the one that is most well-known now: the double crossover.
The double crossover is the final act. A culmination of the crossover’s lineage, at least for now. It is the move, in all of its iterations, sped up and performed almost with a violence. It is exactly what it sounds like: the player performs a killer crossover to throw the defender off balance, and then quickly drags the ball back in the other direction. What made Allen Iverson so efficient and unstoppable in his early career was this move. Defenders, used to only having to shift direction a single time, were thrown off by the small, added movement. It seems like nothing, really. But, depending on pace, the things that can throw us off balance are often the small things.
The main strength of a crossover is that it works best when you are being closely guarded. When someone is hovering over you, the crossover allows for a shuffling of feet, a quick backtrack. This is why defenders who are on the business end of a mean crossover sometimes fall to the ground—the quick lateral shuffling of feet when trying to close space means that their legs sometimes get tangled. It creates a thrilling scene. When I was in high school in 2001, a few years after Iverson’s most iconic moment, but still firmly in the middle of his career, our basketball team’s starting point guard hit a teacher with a crossover during a lunch game, and the teacher fell, sliding across the gym floor in his tan pants and sweat-soaked shirt. The gym erupted with students screaming and running in all directions. The teacher, for the remai
nder of the day, had to walk around with a dark streak on his light pants, like a scar, showing the results of his humiliation. That, too, is part of the ritual: a crossover, more than about getting space, is about who can be briefly humiliated inside of the space you make.
The thing about Allen Iverson is that it felt like he should’ve never made it because in 1993, it was said that he threw a chair during a fight in a bowling alley, which broke out because him and his boys were too loud and it was a big brawl in Hampton, Virginia, and when the police came, only the black people were arrested and so maybe it wasn’t just that him and his boys were too loud. Allen, then a high school senior, bound for sports glory, said, “What kind of man would I be to hit a woman in the head with a damn chair?” but a judge still gave him 15 years with 10 suspended, and so Allen went off to the Newport News Correctional Farm for four months until the Virginia Court of Appeals overturned the conviction due to a lack of evidence.
During those four months, Iverson had to finish his high school career at Richard Milburn High School, a school for at-risk students, instead of Bethel High, where he was an all-state football and basketball player. Because of this, his scholarship offers dried up, despite his overwhelming talent in both sports. Only one coach, Georgetown’s John Thompson, came to visit him. And this is how Allen Iverson began to make it, despite.
The narrative about Allen Iverson is that he’s difficult. Difficult to coach, difficult with the media, difficult to the people he loves most. He often clashed with authority figures even if he loved them. Hugging John Thompson one minute, and storming away from him the next. The logic, at least as it always appeared to someone watching from afar, was that Allen Iverson loved the game, loved his people, in a way that couldn’t be understood, even by those people he loved so much. It is the kind of love that would, perhaps, force a high school sports star to put his career on the line if his boys were in danger.
During Allen Iverson’s now-infamous “Practice” rant, which came after his 76ers were eliminated in the first round of the 2002 playoffs, after making the finals the year before, everyone always hones in on the fireworks: Iverson, repeatedly, bemoaning the fact that he is in a press conference talking about practice. He was worn down, and it showed. The season had weighed on him, littered with reports of him taking plays off and missing mandatory practices leading the rumors of him being traded away from his beloved Philadelphia in the offseason. And it is entertaining, if nothing else. Iverson, fed up, had gotten one too many questions about his practice habits. It is humorous to watch him, in full demonstrative fashion, yelling, “Practice? Practice? We’re talking about practice? Not a game. Not a game. But practice?” repeatedly, but there’s a reality to it: he simply can’t fathom why anything but the game is important. Basketball is a game that literally saved his life, and so it seemed, to him, like being asked to give his all to it in a game was the ultimate sacrifice. Practice was extra—something that didn’t move him.
And he did give his all, for years, throwing his body all over the place for the city of Philadelphia, and dragging lackluster teams to the playoffs, and then to the finals. He was a 6-foot wrecking ball, who wouldn’t practice hurt, but who would play hurt for what felt like half of the season. The era of witnessing Allen Iverson was the era of learning a language for your limits and how to push beyond them.
But the true work of the press conference lies outside of that brief section. It is a man, at the end of his rope, trying to convince a room that he loves the city he plays for, that he’s hurt and afraid, that he is concerned about his family and the game he loves. That he thinks his body may be starting to betray him, and he still wants to give the game all he has. Toward the end of the rant, an exhausted Iverson leaned forward on the table to share the most jarring and human moment of the afternoon, which also gets lost. During the season, Iverson’s best friend Rahsaan Langford was murdered. He hadn’t been very open about the loss until this moment, dropped into a hostile press conference about a game he loved, but was uncertain about his future in.
I’m upset because of one reason… we are in here. I lost my best friend, I lost this year [in the playoffs], I feel that everything is going downhill for me as far as my life.
I don’t want to deal with this man, I don’t want to go through this shit man.
At the top of the key in 1996, Michael Jordan is stretched out in his typical defensive stance. He was, by this point, one of the NBAs elite defenders, a skill he entered the league with but perfected in the early ’90s, while trying to get past the Detroit Pistons during his first title run. His defensive stance on the night is perfect: arms stretched wide like the wings of a hunting bird, knees bent, and leaning forward on the tops of his feet. There are no statues of him in this stance, though there should be. It is the part of his game that most looked like he had to work at it. By this point in Jordan’s career, he could make everything on the offensive end look easy. His knowledge of the game, and the way he’d shifted his style of play to preserve his body, led to an understanding of offensive movements that seemed to make the game slow down for him. But on the defensive end, he was still tenacious, like he was fighting to earn his way off of the bench.
Michael Jordan never threw a chair during a brawl, as far as we know. He had his share of indecencies, many of them rooted in gambling and infidelity, things that came fully to light after he was out of the game for good. But Jordan, in some ways, was the anti-Iverson. No one would ever call Michael Jordan a thug, a label Iverson was saddled with from the first stages of his career, and probably for much of his life before he entered the NBA.
Michael Jordan spoke clearly to reporters and flashed a wide smile with perfect teeth. Michael Jordan endorsed good things like healthy cereal and sports drinks. People died over Michael Jordan’s shoes, but let’s not talk about that part. Michael Jordan was the kind of black person people wouldn’t mind living next to. Michael Jordan was just as competitive as Allen Iverson but he wore it better. Michael Jordan probably didn’t love his teammates as much though. Punched one of them in the face during a practice. But at least he showed up to practice. You can’t terrorize your teammates at practice if you don’t show up. There were two NBAs, it seemed. The one of black players who fit into the Jordan personality archetype. And, by the time Allen Iverson came along, black players who decidedly did not.
My parents were from New York and so they loved the Knicks and so I kind of loved the Knicks and my brother loved John Starks and my mother thought Charles Smith seemed like a “nice guy” and Michael Jordan maybe could have gone easier on the Knicks in the early ’90s is all I’m saying really I’m saying I grew up in a home of people who maybe believed Michael Jordan had a bad thing coming
If you listen closely, especially in replays, you can hear Bulls coach Phil Jackson yelling for Michael Jordan to approach Iverson at the top of the key once Iverson gets the ball. “Get up on him,” he yells out. The double crossover, when sped up, doesn’t seem like much. But Iverson is a technician. First, he gave Jordan a small cross, just to see if he’d bite on it. Jordan did, lightly, shifting his body to his right, and giving a slight reach for the ball.
This is the moment where, looking back, you know Michael Jordan is done for. It isn’t the second crossover, the one that actually finishes him. It’s when he bites on the first, smaller one. When he admits a willingness to be fooled. It’s all a negotiation of what someone will open up their body to. A negotiation of disbelief, really: what can be sold and who is willing to buy it. By the time Jordan re-sets his feet, Iverson goes in for the larger cross, the one that sends Jordan back to his right, this time more aggressively, opening up the left side of his body for Iverson to slide past.
Had Iverson not made the jump shot after the move, the archival of the moment would not exist. Or if it did, it would be an afterthought—something briefly brilliant, but unfinished. People pull off grand moves every day before missing a shot, or throwing a pass out of bounds, or dribbling the ball o
ff of an opponent’s foot. Allen Iverson, with Jordan lunging to get a hand in his face, made a shot from the free throw line before falling, and jogging to get back down the court, staring briefly at Jordan, not entirely with arrogance, but with disbelief.
If a guard did change in this moment, it was within the way the game was played, and who it was played facing. The streetballers, those who valued style over substance, the short people who couldn’t dunk but could definitely dribble, now had a lighthouse.
Eventually, in 2005, when Allen Iverson grew out cornrows and wore tall and baggy shirts, flat-brimmed hats, and covered himself in gold chains at press conferences, David Stern’s NBA instituted a dress code. Michael Jordan always dressed well, after all. Players were to wear suits now, to look presentable in front of the media. It was the Iverson rule. Something to stifle what some were calling “hip-hop fashion” before it bled into the NBA’s locker rooms. Allen Iverson pushed back against the code, racking up fines so that he could still wear his jewels, his baggy clothes. So he could never let anyone forget where he was from. So that he could never let anyone forget what he gave up to get here. So that he would always remember that he was different from what the past was: that he blew through it one night in 1997 and never looked back.
They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us Page 11