He has been accused of carrying a gun -- and of carrying the basketball. The fashion police are all over him, and the real police know him too, and it would help if his friends could stop agitating the DEA.

He is Allen Iverson, and he'll be a free agent after this season -- whatever free agency means in the NBA these days -- and he is inclined to start cleaning up his image. He wants to share the ball, and he wants to win more than once a week, and he wants to stay in Philly, and he can't help it that he wants Latrell Sprewell, too. Maybe he can be CEO Iverson one day. Maybe he is on the right track. He was never locked up this summer (only locked out), and that is the first step. All he's done wrong recently is lend his Mercedes to a buddy, only to have that buddy get pulled over by the Norfolk, Va., police. They allegedly found cocaine on one of the passengers and marijuana on Allen's buddy (who would plead guilty to possessing it), and when they ran a license plate check, the computer spewed out that name again: Iverson.

David Stern hit the roof, of course, but David Stern will still have to market Allen Iverson someday -- because Allen Iverson will not and cannot be ignored. He has the crossover and he has the corn rows, and he has the hops, and he has the size XXXXXL clothes, and, heaven forbid, he has opinions.

He is wiser than most of us think. He was a teenage inmate for his alleged role in a bowling alley brawl that he was eventually cleared of, and he was in a cell for four months with grown men telling him to go out and make a name for himself -- not a serial number. He ended up at Georgetown, ended up going first in the draft to the 76ers and ended up pleading no contest to a weapons charge. But he has children now, and a conscience, and a sense of humor, too.

For instance, he was playing pickup ball during the lockout one day, and his baggy clothes were falling down his backside as usual, and he said what we all had been thinking for years. "I need more ass," Allen Iverson said.

We don't see him playing pickup ball with his "fellas," and his fellas hacking him on the arm, and him saying, "Foul! Foul!" We don't see Allen Iverson cracking up then and going, "That's what I say to the refs during the season -- 'Foul, foul!' -- and that's why they all hate me."

But the thing is: To know him is not to hate him. --TF

***

I only wore one kind of sneaker when I was a kid -- Jordans. I always wanted to wear Jordans. Seemed like every time they came out, my mom did whatever she had to do to make sure I got 'em. Sometimes rent didn't get paid because of it, but she made sure I had 'em. On the first day of school, or the first week, everybody's showing off all the new stuff they got -- you know, their school clothes. But I would have, like, a pair of Jordans, and a couple pair of pants and, like, three shirts. I'd rather have some Jordans than clothes any day.

I was always real hard on shoes, but not my Jordans. I always took care of those. It was hard to because you want to wear them to school and you want to play in them, but I would usually discipline myself, or my mom did. She'd make me take them off. She'd say, "Take your school shoes off and put on these old sneakers."

But you've got to understand what sneakers meant to me, and what they still mean to me. I mean, if I lost my Reebok deal the way Chris Webber lost his Fila deal, man, that'd be terrible. Terrible. I think I've been loyal to Reebok, but they have definitely been loyal to me. They've been with me through thick and thin, when they could've dropped me. When I've gotten in trouble, they always got in touch with Que -- Que Gaskins, who's involved with me and works for them -- and asked Que what was going on. They wanted to know what was going on from him or me first. They've been there for me, and, man, I don't understand it. I mean, with Webber, Fila just dropped him like that. Sprewell, they dropped him. I got into something with the law, but they stuck by me. I owe them a lot for it.

But I've always had a lot happening to me, all my life. Where do I start? Just incidents, like being incarcerated, which led me to basketball. I mean, I think I got more football letters from colleges than basketball, but when I was incarcerated, the basketball world was showing me more love than the football world. When I was incarcerated, everyone was just talking basketball, basketball.

And then my mom felt I needed a strong coach to help me if I got out of the situation I was in. And Coach Thompson at Georgetown seemed like the perfect coach for it. And she went up there and talked to him, and asked him, you know, would he take me under his wing, and he said yeah. And that's why I ended up going to Georgetown. The football program wasn't too big at Georgetown, so it was basketball from then on. Although I have to say, I asked Coach Thompson one day in the locker room, "What you think about me playing football?" And he didn't answer me. He just looked at me like I was crazy, so I never thought about playing football again after that day.

For a while, I didn't like basketball. I thought basketball was soft. But I came home one day, when I was 8 or 9, and my mom told me I was going to basketball practice. She bought me a brand-new pair of Jordans to go in, which was good, but, I mean, I cried all the way out the door. She made me go. She made me go. And when I got there, I saw guys on my football team, and it was fun. And I came home and thanked her, and I've been playing basketball ever since, and I've been wearing Jordans ever since.

And then it happened all these years later -- I got my own shoe, an Iverson shoe. And I'll never forget the first time I saw a kid with my sneakers on. I think he was walking across the street, and I was in my car. I pulled over and just sat in the car. I stopped, put my hazard lights on, and watched him walk all the way across the street to wherever he was going. He was just walking, and I was just watching. He was wearing the red and white "Question." I watched him for at least five minutes, and only when he got out of sight did I leave.

When I go to the playgrounds now, all the kids from my neighborhood got on my sneakers. They wear 'em until there's nothing on the bottom, 'til their feet are about to come out of them. And I'm like, "Man." It's just a great feeling, man. I always tried to have the best sneakers in school, and when I see these kids on the playground wearing my sneakers, I know that used to be me. That was me wearing Jordans. I get goose bumps just looking at it. It's wild. It makes me think how I got to where I am, how I got from there to here.

***

There was this guy, Tony Clark, and he meant everything to me. He inspired me, somewhat like my mom. He was someone who always told me I could do something with my life. He made me believe I could do it and, see, I never had a role model in my life. I never looked up to no one but my mom. She always told me I could be somebody and I could do something with my life with the talent God gave me, and I always believed it. It was the same with Tony. See, when I skipped school, I'd come hang out with him. He was six, seven years older than me. He'd tell my mom what was going on and my mom would come get me, and I used to cry and scream at him and tell him I hated him. But he was always doing it because he loved me and cared about me.

And then to lose him, it was wild. I was like his little man and he used to look out for me, and he even stayed with us for like two years, off and on. He was just going through a lot of things with his family and his girlfriend. And then his girlfriend killed him.

I was 15, and I had no more role model, man. Who replaced Tony? One of the guys I deal with right now. Andre Steele. Andre's 27 or 28 right now, and he really looked out for me back then. This is the friend of mine who got arrested this summer. People criticize me for it. I mean, I feel about my friends like other people feel about theirs. That's why it's kind of hard for me to understand why people can't understand why I deal with my friends. They're my friends like Tony was my friend. They looked out for me growing up like Tony did, and they still do. But they make mistakes; they're human just like I am.

Yeah, Andre got arrested this summer, and yeah, it bothered me. I always get such a bad rap over my friends. They try so hard to stay clean and not get in trouble and just do what's right. Of course, they need to know that if anything negative happens to them, who's it going to come back on? Not them. Me. They'll have their names flashed all over ESPN and the papers, but it'll all come back on me. And I guess that's the only positive thing I take from it -- that they can learn from it.

I mean, Andre, he apologized to me, and I couldn't really understand what he was saying because he was crying so hard. And it was hard for him to even look my mom in her eyes. Because she trusted him and she believed in him and she knows who he is to me. I just told him he made a mistake, but that he's got to watch out for guys. The guy that was with him in my Mercedes is not as tight with us. That guy didn't understand he was riding in Allen Iverson's car, with Allen Iverson's best friend. I mean, that's Allen Iverson's car, it's under his name, and if anything happens, if they find anything in there, it's going to come down on me. And I'm saying none of that stuff in there was Andre's stuff. Andre never knew that the guy had it. I mean, that can happen to anybody, but it can't happen to us. No more. That's how I explained it to Andre. He didn't know what was going on, but he should've known.

Because it gets back to David Stern, man. And I care about that. People just look at me for the bad things they hear, and once you keep hearing a guy's name over and over, you get kind of frustrated. I can understand how David Stern feels about it, but I'm trying so hard. I've got to set an example for all these little kids that look up to me. I've got kids of my own to set an example for, and that means something to me.

People may think I'm just out of control out here and just running around crazy, but it's not like that. I'm a father, and my kids look up to me. I don't want my kids reading about me in the paper for nothing but something positive. I mean, I have a son, Allen II, and he's almost a year now, and I want him to know me from basketball, not nothing else. And I want him to play basketball. He's Allen II, so I call him "Deuce." I always think about him wearing No. 2 and playing point guard. Or playing football and wearing No. 2. I always think about that. I want him to play sports so bad, just like I want my daughter to play in the WNBA.

So all I do is try to keep the negative publicity away from them and from me. But I think from the incident that happened before I even got to the NBA, I already had sort of a bad boy-type image. I'm talking about the bowling alley incident. I'll always remember what those people did to me in Hampton. And I think about it because that's one of the reasons I'm here right now. It just made me stronger. I don't know if I would be as strong without that incident.

When I was incarcerated, I prayed and I learned from other guys in there. That's what I did mostly -- I just listened. A lot of the inmates in there knew me before I got there, and when I came there, all of them were just standing around quiet, just looking at me. And I was scared. I was only 18 years old, and all of them were staring at me. And all the older inmates were like, "We're going to take care of you." And whenever I got around the younger inmates, the older inmates would tell me, "Leave them alone. They're bad news, man." And they would tell the younger inmates to leave me alone, too. And they'd always tell me I was going to get out, and I was going to do something.

And I wanted to do something for my family. So bad. I wanted to be the first Iverson just to make it, just to make something out of life. My mom and my sister, I just wanted to get them out of the projects so bad. I was just so hungry. So hungry. I was starving. I wanted to do something with my life. And I felt football and basketball was my way to do it. Teachers always say, "Only one out of a billion, or a million, make it to the NBA or the NFL." But I used to always say to myself, "Not me! I'm different." I always looked at it like that. And once I got incarcerated, I still felt I could do something. All I prayed for every night was just to get one more chance, one more chance.

And I tried to keep my head straight. I remember right before I got locked up, I asked my grandma, "If God knows I didn't do what they accused me of doing, why is he letting this happen to me?" And I'll never forget it. She said, "Never question what God does." And after that, I never did again.

Now you want to know why I don't get rid of my friends? Well, I'll tell you why. While I was locked up, they took care of my mom and my sister. And they took care of them the whole time when I was in school at Georgetown, when I couldn't. Financially and physically. Anything my mom wanted. I came home from school one time and Andre showed me his beeper. He could only keep 16 messages on his beeper at a time, and my mom's phone number was up there on his beeper 16 times. That's how much he meant to her while I was gone.

And that's how much Andre means to me. He's basically Tony to me. So I won't ever get rid of my friends.

***

I'll never forget my rookie season in Philly. I was coming in the league and I wanted to make a name for myself. I always knew I had the ability, and I thought it was my time to prove it. But sometimes, I tried too much. And I remember Scottie Pippen. I was at the free throw line one game and he asked me, "Where you get your shoes from? Kids 'R' Us?" And the rest of the guys started laughing. I guess it was because I was a rookie and I had my own sneakers, or whatever. I didn't say nothing back to him. They were beating us to death; I didn't find it too amusing.

Then the thing happened with Jordan, and that's when everything started going downhill for me. In November of my rookie year, everybody loved Allen Iverson. No problems. And when that happened with Mike ... it's never been the same. I mean, they were the world champions, and Mike tells me, "If you all are going to respect anybody, you all are are going to respect us." This is during a game. That's what Michael said to me and to Jerry Stackhouse.

And I said, "I'm not going to respect anybody." But I was talking about on the basketball court. I mean, the battle's already lost once you over-respect someone like that, and he's the greatest player in the world. But the media took that as me meaning I don't respect Jordan -- and blew it all out of proportion. I mean, of course I respect Michael Jordan. How can you not respect him? But on the court, I'm trying to beat him, and he's trying to beat me. And it was just crazy for him to say it to me like that during a game. I mean, that's the only way I felt I could respond. "I don't respect nobody." But it was like messing with the king, and I paid for it. And I'm saying to myself, "Michael knows it didn't go down like that, that I never said I didn't respect him." And I'm getting blasted for it. But he never said anything in my defense. That's when they started tearing me apart. And it's been like that ever since.

Someday people are just going to have to accept me, that's all. I think it'll happen. Someday. But I think winning has a lot to do with it. When you're losing and you've got a bad rap, then that don't make it any better. But once you win, people try to understand you more. People get to know you easy in the playoffs. Make it to the Finals, and they'll get to know you. They'll listen to you.

Like Dennis. Dennis is not a bad guy. I love Dennis Rodman! I love his game, I love the fact that he's who he is and he don't care about what people think. I love all of that about him. He's strong, he's been through a lot in his life, and he wins. I love Dennis Rodman. I would love to have Dennis Rodman on my basketball team; I don't care if he's 45 years old.

There's another guy I'd want on my team too. And I don't know how people will react to this, but his name is Latrell Sprewell. Michael Jordan may be the greatest two-guard to ever play the game -- ever -- but Latrell Sprewell is the second best. He's awesome. I mean, if I could be another player, I'd be Sprewell. If I could be a two-guard, I'd want to play like him. I mean, I'm not saying I'm cool with what he did. Because I think what he did was wrong, it was terrible, it was something he probably wishes he could take back. I don't think he meant to do it; he just snapped. And it's something that'll haunt him for the rest of his life. But I know him, and I know he's a good guy.

I wish we had him on the Sixers. I'd ask the Sixers to do it too -- in the blink of an eye. But I don't know how Coach Brown feels about the situation, or what the organization feels about Latrell as a person. But he and I together on the court? That'd be a real dream come true. And we wouldn't have no problems, because I'd let Latrell score. I'll tell him, "You can do all the scoring you want," 'cause I know how to get involved in a basketball game.

Like this coming year. The thing with me, I want to have games where I have 15 or 20 assists and just 10 points. Or just 15 points. I score because I know I can score, and when we need me to score, then I score. But I want people to know it's not about points with me.

I hear our coaches may want me to play some two-guard this coming season. But I can get assists from both positions. Of course, the thing is, the two-guard is supposed to look to score. And I feel in my heart -- I mean, this is in my heart -- that if I played the two-guard position, I know that I can lead this league in scoring every single year. I know that. But that's not the big picture for me. I don't want to be a two-guard. I want to be a point guard. I want to know how to win games at the point guard position. I want to know when to score at the point guard position and when not to score. I want to know when to hold back and when to go. And that's what I'm learning. I don't want to learn the two-guard position, because I already know the two-guard position. Point guard is a challenge, and there's a lot that comes with that.

Most of all, I want to win, man. When we didn't make the playoffs my rookie year, I was like, "Okay, this is my first year." But the second year, I cried. Because the playoffs is a whole other atmosphere. It's like my time to shine. These are the type of games I need to play in, because, I mean, that's the type of player I am. I want to be in big games.

And I want to master this game. I want to know this game like Michael Jordan knows the game. Not physically, but mentally. I want to know it like Magic Johnson knew it. Mentally. Like Larry Bird knew it. And Coach Brown has helped me get better with that. How to get people involved, when to take the game over and when not to. When to settle things down. That's what they're teaching me, Coach Brown and (assistant coach) Maurice Cheeks.

At first, me and Coach Brown started out kind of tough. He's tough on point guards, so the relationship was real rocky at first. But I just put my pride aside and said, "I'll just try to listen to him and do it his way." And his way worked. We won more games his way and I learned more about the game doing it his way, and our relationship got tighter toward the end of last season. He started to trust what I thought, and I believed in whatever he thought. So I want to stay there. I'm a free agent after this year, but I don't want to play for nobody else. I want to finish my career a Sixer.

Not that I'll change completely, man. Little kids love flashy players, and that's what I try to do with my game. Point guards nowadays don't dunk. They don't dunk! And that's what I try to add to the NBA. This point guard will come in there and bang it on your head. When I get a breakaway, people don't want to see me laying the ball up -- they want to see me dunk it, so I dunk it.

I want to be a flashy player. I want to do all the flashy things on the court. All the things you see on the playground, I want to do in the NBA and still be effective. To know how to do it and not throw the ball away. See, I plan on having an impact on this league like Isiah Thomas. I want to be the first Allen Iverson, but I also want to be the next Isiah Thomas. I want Isiah Thomas stats. I want to be that good. That'll be enough for me.

And I want to take the baton from Michael when he's gone. I want to be the heir. But I don't want people to give me that title. I don't want people to say, "Okay, this is Allen Iverson's league. Mike's gone, it's him." Give it to Kobe. You all give it to Kobe, or give it to Grant, or give it to Shaq. I want people to give it to them. If they want it to be given to them, then give it to them. But I don't want that. I want all the odds against me. That's the way I've been all my life. I want all the odds against me, and I want to take it.

I want to say, "You all didn't give me this title, I took this. I took this." They talk about handing over the torch, but I don't want them to hand it to me. I want to take it. When the best player leaves this game, when No. 23 leaves this game, then I'll make my bid myself.

Those are some big shoes to fill, but I'll stick both of my feet in 'em if I have to, just for them to fit. Yep. I'll stick my feet in that dude's sneakers. Like I said, I wore 'em when I was a kid.

This article appears in the November 16, 1998 issue of ESPN The Magazine.