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For those who were there at McDonough
Gymnasium on August 4, 1994, few will forget
the arrival of a 6-0 freshman guard who
needed no introduction. The rumors of Allen
Iverson's arrival to the Kenner Summer League
were true, and by game's end, Iverson had
scored 40 points. By the Sunday afternoon
final, before an overflow crowd inside the
gym and a crowd of those outside who could
not get in, Iverson finished a combined 99
point effort in three days against some of
the best collegiate talent in the city. This,
of course, from a player that had not played
organized basketball in over a year. The
Allen Iverson years had begun. A brief
profile can't do justice to tell the story of
one of the greatest pure athletes ever to
attend Georgetown, a man without peer in his
talent over two years at the collegiate
level. Just a year before his Kenner debut,
few would have imagined Allen Iverson ever
playing college basketball. Iverson was not
only a 31 point a game guard for Bethel HS,
but a football player of tremendous skill. As
a quarterback and defensive back his
sophomore season, he produced nearly 1,600
yards offense and 13 INT's. By his junior
year, he accounted for 2,204 yards, 21
touchdowns by rush or interception, and 14
touchdown passes. In a region which has
produced NFL quarterbacks such as Michael
Vick and Aaron Brooks, there are those who
will still say "Bubbachuck" Iverson was
better than both of them. Schools such as
Arkansas, Kentucky, Duke, and three dozen
other top programs across two sports were
vying for perhaps the greatest two-sport star
the Tidewater had ever produced. When he led
Bethel to the state title, someone asked what
it was like to win the title. "I'm going to
get one in basketball now," which he did. In
late February, 1993, en route to the state
title he had promised, Iverson was one of a
large group of Bethel teammates at a Hampton
bowling alley when a fight broke out between
students from rival schools trading racial
insults. Three people were hurt in the
aftermath. Despite conflicting testimony from
eyewitnesses and no clear evidence linking
him to the crime, Iverson was one of four
black students arrested. Racial tensions were
heightened when the prosecutors passed on a
misdemeanor assault charge and charged
Iverson with three counts of felony "maiming
by mob", which carried a 20 year prison
sentence. Despite video evidence which did
not place Iverson in the crowd at the time of
the fight, he was convicted in a racially
charged case. The 20 year sentence was later
reduced to five, and Iverson was granted
clemency by Gov. Douglas Wilder three months
later, sending Iverson to a detention program
at an alternative high school. (The original
charges were thrown out by the Virginia court
of appeals in 1995.) In the spring of 1994,
with Iverson still in detention, his mother
approached John Thompson with a plea to help
her son get to college and start a new
chapter of his life. Though Thompson had
passed on a number of troubled players in the
past, he offered Iverson a scholarship in
April of that season, contingent upon his
completion of high school and his legal
release, which was granted 48 hours before
his Kenner debut. By his debut in a
Georgetown uniform in November 1994, Iverson
had been the subject of intense national
media attention. In the Hoyas' annual
exhibition with Fort Hood, Iverson scored 36
points, five assists, and three steals in 23
minutes. Local columnists were in awe. "Hang
his number up in the rafters," wrote Tom
Knott of the Washington Times. "He's better
than most of the point guards in the NBA
right now." Allen Iverson Kobe Bryant Tracy
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