Babb Kent - Not a game: the incredible rise and unthinkable fall of Allen Iverson

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Copyright 2015 by Kent Babb

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Interior design by Meryll Preposi

Jacket Design by Bradford Foltz

Jacket Photograph Ezra Shaw/Staff/Getty Images

Author Photograph by Jonathan Newton

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4767-3765-2

ISBN 978-1-4767-7898-3 (ebook)

For the younguns who arent supposed to make it

And, of course, for Whitney

PROLOGUE

A llen Iverson was thirsty the night before the test that would determine how often he saw his five children, but more than that he was restless.

His six-bedroom mansion in northwest Atlanta was a prison now: an empty, 7,800-square-foot jailhouse with one inmate, and Iverson could not stand the silence. It was late December 2012, and months earlier his estranged wife had moved out, renting an apartment in nearby Suwanee and taking the kids with her. She kept saying she wanted a divorce, but this was not the first time she had said that. Wasnt even the first time she had filed. Iverson told himself she would be back, because no matter how drunk or belligerent or violent he got, no matter the hour or condition he staggered home, Tawanna had always come back, filling these walls with life and soundjust the way Iverson liked it.

Now, though, it was silent. Uncomfortably so. Iverson had not played in the National Basketball Association in nearly three years, and his last game of any kind had been an exhibition in China two months earliera quick paycheck to keep the lights on and the creditors quiet. The house carried a second mortgage now, and in less than two months it would be foreclosed and later sold at auction. But for now, it was home, even if it no longer felt much like it. The previous day had been Christmas, songs and voices filling the air, but now on this Wednesday evening, it was quiet again, and Iverson was stirring. Maybe he would go out for a while. He liked the bar at P.F. Changs because it was familiar and close, five miles from his house, and there was valet parking and cold Corona.

One drink wouldnt hurt, would it? Just to take the edge off. Maybe two.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, he walked toward the doctors office near Hartsfield airport, assuming he had sobered up enough to beat the test. Iverson had more than a drink or two the night before, but it was four in the afternoon now, plenty of time for the alcohol to pass through his system. The problem was, Iverson had always underestimated his own metabolism, even before he was thirty-seven years old. His face was puffier now, his midsection and arms softer than they had been when he was named most valuable player of the NBA in 2001, when he led the Philadelphia 76ers to the NBA Finals and Iversons determined play announced to the world that an athlete and man cannot be judged on appearance alone.

Back then, he could stay out until the wee hours, a friend helping him into his Atlantic City hotel room after a marathon night of gambling or Tawanna leading him up the stairs and into the bed, and still function well enough to make it to the arena in time to drop forty points, breaking some fools ankles with his crossover dribble and then slashing toward the basket as he bounced off bodies almost twice his size. But he was pushing forty, and the years had been unkind. He drank more now, and the hangovers were less eager to loosen their grip. The booze made him edgy, more impatient and profane, and sometimes he would piss on the floor in front of the kids or, if Tawanna looked at him sideways, drag his high school sweetheart up the stairs by her hair or dig the toe of his Timberland into the top of her bare foot, grinding like he was putting out a cigarette. Sometimes he reminded her of his connections and how inexpensive it would be to have her killed; Iverson estimated her life was worth maybe $5,000.

She believed he was an alcoholic, and no manner of plea or threat would keep him home and sober. Tawanna spoke to his mother, Ann Iverson, begging her to talk sense into her son. She hounded Gary Moore, Iversons childhood mentor and now his personal manager, asking him to say something because he might not listen to most people, Gary, but you know hell listen to you. She cried and asked gently and, when that did not work, she showed her teeth and asked angrily, slinging a champagne bottle against the wall and threatening to take the kids and the rest of his money if he did not stop drinking and throwing their future away. He told her he could stop any time he wanted, but he would not be told to do anything; that was never the way to get Iverson to do anything. And so she did as she said, filing for divorce in 2010 before baiting Iverson into signing a lopsided postnuptial agreement before she moved back in one last time. She filed again in 2012 and hired a high-profile divorce attorney, telling him that she did not trust Iverson around their children. Not when they had been newborns, when he had blown off major events because he was too drunkincluding the birth of his first sonand certainly not now that things had worsened. One of the courts first rulings was to order a substance abuse evaluation and gauge how severe the problem really was. The assessment by the substance abuse doctor, Michael Fishman, would go a long way in determining custody and visitation for the children.

The test was simple, and all Iverson had to do was not have alcohol in his system for one day. He had scheduled the appointment carefully, factoring in his hatred of mornings, and asked for a window late in the afternoon. Four oclock it was, and now he entered the office and greeted the workers, two of whom could still smell alcohol on his breath from the night before. A while later, Fishman swabbed the inside of Iversons mouth, and his saliva showed that even now, so many hours after that final drink, his blood-alcohol content was between .06 and .08, the latter number indicating that, according to Georgia law, Iverson was still too drunk to even drive himself here. Then Iverson filled a cup with urine, and at 6 p.m., he still had enough booze in his system that the test showed his BAC was .05, suggesting to Fishman that on a most important day, with alcohol as the matter in question, Iverson had either gotten himself so shit-faced the night before that he was still drunk as afternoon turned to evening, or he had kept on drinking that afternoon.

Iversons test results made Fishmans assessment easy, and when Iverson finally met with the cases guardian ad litem, a court-appointed investigator and mediator, at the Fulton County Superior Courthousehe had blown off their first appointment and called at the last minute to reschedule the secondshe noted that Iverson smelled remarkably of alcohol. A different doctor had also smelled alcohol on Iversons breath during yet another evaluation.