When making a “Mount Rushmore” debate in any sport, or listing the top 10 players of all time in that sport, championships won seem to play a pivotal point in measuring the greatness of athletes.
Something you might hear is, “Yeah that is true, but how many rings do they have?” when debating where players fall on the greatest of all-time list. It is almost as if an athlete does not win a championship; all the hard work, historic numbers and game changing significance becomes irrelevant.
Allen Iverson is one of those whose career is deemed tarnished due to his inability to bring home the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship versus the Los Angeles Lakers back in 2001.
Throughout his illustrious career, he finished 12th of all time in career steals, 19th in points and 38th in assists. The NBA has seen over 3,000 players try to make their mark in the fifty plus years of existence. No one has made their mark in the NBA, as far as success, popularity and changing the way the game is played, the way that Iverson did.
Drafted number one overall in 1996 by the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers, his rookie year was one to remember, as he crossed paths with the greatest to ever play the game and took advantage with the ankle-breaker heard around the world.
Iverson’s crossover on Michael Jordan cemented him as a star in the league.
Jordan is undoubtedly the best player in NBA history, but he is one of a kind. He went to the NBA Finals six times and came out the champion of them six times. No one has ever done what Jordan did, but his legacy is always compared to other NBA greats. I believe his career is so perfect that it should be an outlier when comparing other top performers.
Iverson twice led the NBA in scoring and steals in the same season. Jordan is the only other player to lead the league in both steals and points in the same season.
However, on ESPN’s Top 100 Players in NBA History, while Jordan is indeed number one, Iverson rounds out the top 50, making it to number 46 on the list.
Iverson impacted the NBA in numerous ways on and off the court. His trademark crossover is being mimicked to this day by the multitude of NBA players who grew up watching him.
Iverson is also the reason the NBA has a dress code. Never being afraid to express who he was through his abundance of tattoos and baggy street clothes, the NBA has now made formal clothing a uniform for all NBA Players.
Despite his outstanding numbers and game changing era, because Iverson did not win a championship his legacy will forever be overlooked during the NBA’s “Mount Rushmore” conversation.
