Reading Journal:

Text: Allen Iverson, Text type: Documentary, Author/Director: Zatella Beatty

On February 14, 1993 Iverson was witnessed in an incident that could’ve changed his whole career. Iverson and several of his friends were hanging out at a bowling alley in Hampton, Virginia. Eventually during the time that Iverson and his friends were at the bowling alley, a shouting duel began among-st another group of youths. Eventually a fight began to undertake, pitting the white crowd against the black crowd. During the fight Iverson was accused of striking a women in the head with a chair. Iverson himself and three of his friends were the only people arrested. Iverson drew a 15 year prison sentence, with 10 years suspension. But thankfully Iverson was granted with only spending 4 months at Newport News City Farm after the conviction was overturned.

In 1996 Iverson became a professional basketball player in the NBA, Iverson started off his career for being the number 1 pick in the draft chosen by the Philadelphia 76ers, lin the end of that season Iverson was awarded with the 1996- 97 Rookie of the year. Iverson had a talent for basketball but also had a lot of ups and downs during his career and showed a lot of perks during the tough times. Some of the perks i am going to talk to you about are his Determination, Courage and Chemisty.

whilst watching the Allen Iverson documentary i felt a strong feeling of determination with Iverson, I felt this because no matter how many people said negative things to Iverson or the bad things that had occurred in his life he kept fighting for his career and didn’t care what people thought about him. This determination showed me to never give up in your dreams. This determination can be shown when Allen Iverson was selected for the Eastern All-Star team in 2000, this was a dream to Iverson since he was a kid which made him never give up and to try his hardest since day one he stepped into the NBA. As he says “It was tough to stay out of trouble and just stay on the positive path”.

I also felt a strong feeling of courage with Iverson. With his time in the NBA a lot of people had questioned him about his looks, with having tattoos and dread locks and told him that this wasn’t the future of the NBA, and didn’t want this image to be shown to the younger up coming generation, and most of the time he was related to be called a gang member. But Iverson didn’t care about these comments he stuck to who he was and what his appearance was. And after a while Allen Iversons style started to trend in the NBA seeing numerous players with tattoos and wearing chains and dread locks, and by looking at the NBA 56% of the players have tattoos.

The last thing i wanted to talk about was the Chemisty Iverson had with his coaches/teammates. Iverson had some problems with the coaches staff of the 76ers as he didn’t believe in firm practices or discipline which was announced by head coach Chris Ford. This led to a number of contentious incidents, including Iverson being suspended for missing practice, fined for not noticing ford that he wasn’t able to play due to being sick, and refusing to play after feeling “insulted” from Ford. This then led to Iverson getting traded to the Denver Nuggets in 2006-2008 season and then on to the Detroit Pistons and Memphis Grizzlies in the 2008-2009 season and then returning to the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2009-2010 season which meant everything to him.