Wednesday, March 7, 2007. Five years ago tonight. That was my saddest night as a sports fan. Not the worst, but the saddest. By far.
I was at work on the afternoon of December 19, 2006 when the news that Allen Iverson had been traded from my hometown 76ers to the Denver Nuggets was revealed. Iverson’s time as a Sixer had ended a while earlier. Both he and the team had fallen upon hard times, and he was banished in exile. We all knew the end was coming and that he was going to be traded away. Still, the moment we all learned the news was a surreal one.
The first thing I did when I got home from work that evening was to boot up my computer, find the next time the Nuggets were coming to Oakland, and buy a pair of tickets to that game. I do mean first thing. I made the ticket purchase before taking off my jacket, before going to the bathroom, before saying hello to the woman who would become my wife.
Nearly 3 months later, I hopped onto BART to cross the San Francisco Bay. It was the night the truth set in for me. I had seen AI in his Nugget uniform on TV, but seeing it in person made the trade even more real. They wore throwbacks that night—the Nuggets wore white jerseys with black block letters reading “Denver”, the Warriors wore their yellow “The City” jerseys—so I didn’t see #3 in the baby blue road uniform I had expected. The white jersey threw me off. I was so used to seeing him play in the CoreStates/First Union Center in the home whites that familiarity set in. I had to keep reminding myself, “I’m in Oakland. The Warriors are the home team. Allen’s a Nugget.”
Going in, I knew they had little chance to win (Yakhouba Diawara, whom I consider to be the worst NBA starter I have ever seen, played significant minutes that night), but I wanted to see if the little guy still had it. The Nuggets were without Carmelo Anthony that night (LaLa was having a baby), so Denver’s chances, as was usually the case in Philly, lay squarely on Iverson’s shoulders. The box score reads the same way it would have back in 1999 or 2001: 47 minutes, 12-25 from the field, 10-14 from the line, 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 5 turnovers, 35 points. But it wasn’t the same. He was noticeably slower to me. He owned neither the floor nor the arena like he once had. He’d grown old, only the numbers were still in denial. He couldn’t do the things he’d once been able to do on a whim. I could see it, but he couldn’t.
He was like Brett Favre that way. That which had made him so dominant the first half of his career had stayed around to destroy the latter half. In my mind, March 7, 2007 ended the career of Allen Iverson. He was gone.
It seems like yesterday. It feels like 15 years ago. But it’s only been 5. And a lot of us 76er fans are still mourning.
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