If someone asked me, "Hey, /u/joeinthebox, who is your favorite non-Laker in basketball?" My answer would be The Answer. To me, Iverson represents a sort of tragic Ancient Greek hero. A character who is capable of dazzling you and frustrating you. Supporters will praise AI's ability to be successful against all odds. Detractors will lament how AI squandered his Greatest Of All Time potential. Haters will cruelly delight in AI's self-destruction. But I think we can all agree on one thing: Allen Iverson loves basketball as if there nothing else in his life.

IVERSON: I mean, listen, we're talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, we talking about practice. Not a game. Not, not … Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it's my last. [...] When you come to the arena and see me play... You see me play don't you? REPORTER: Absolutely. AI: You see me give everything I got, right? REPORT: Absolutely. There were a few Tweets from Babb that stood out to me: True fact: AI's cornrows started as a bet w/his Reebok liaison, Que Gaskins. Gaskins said: "You better NOT get cornrows." That's all it took The deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and many others who haven't gotten the same media attention have seemed to highlight this massive gulf between White and Black America. But if we can allow ourselves a brief moment of levity, can we just talk and laugh about how cornrows was actually a major controversial issue? In 2015, it almost seems as foreign, outlandish and as old-fashioned as someone saying "colored" or "Oriental." Our cultural ability to move past that gives me a tiny bit of rose-colored optimism and encouragement for the future. And it was Allen Iverson who -- coupled with his brilliance on the basketball court -- was bold, stubborn, stupid, brilliant, transcendent enough to shift cultural opinion. My religiously conservative inadvertently-racist immigrant mother doesn't really follow sports but she does love basketball thanks to the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s. Basketball is where my mom and I can connect on sports. There may be some revisionist history here, but I remember her saying -- probably during the 2001 NBA Finals between the Lakers and the Sixers -- that AI appeared to be a "thug" with those cornrows and tattoos. But she quickly grew to love AI's aggressive style of play, his ambition in spite of his size, his tenacity, his clear passion for the game. Like many immigrants to the United States, any stereotype or misconception about any race is quickly trumped when hard-work is clearly displayed; Allen Iverson in a nutshell. I almost think my mom loved Allen Iverson like a son; Growing to look beyond the tats and the cornrows and seeing a boy who worked his butt off and could benefit from a little parental love and guidance. It's the sort of silly things mothers say that her sons won't understand until years later. Haha. Friends don't see "Practice" as funny but very sad I saw the "Practice" rant as something hilarious and as AI being AI. Years later, I saw "Practice" being a bittersweet reflection of how AI just wanted to play the game, to escape, to hide from a world who he felt misunderstood or under-appreciated his undying love for the game. And now that feeling is reinforced in the context of coach Larry Brown's belief that he was drunk before the "Practice" rant and in the context that his best friend was murdered. There's AI facing the press, possibly drunk and probably still mourning; And reporters are obsessing over -- from Iverson's perspective -- a minor detail and seemingly forgetting how AI plays on the court. All Iverson wanted to do was to just play basketball, ball out, temporarily forget the outside world and his problems for four quarters. The Sixers return is one of the saddest things about AI. Was supposed to be a goodbye tour. AI saw it as going back to 2001. He didnt get it. This is the classic and tragic tale of an athlete who doesn't know when to let it go. This isn't unique to Allen Iverson and I get that AI was awarded millions of dollars to play a game and I get that AI for a variety of reasons -- loyalty? stupidity? alcoholism? delusion? whatever. -- may have allegedly squandered that money and that we really shouldn't feel that bad for Allen Iverson... ... but I can't help it. I should point out that I don't pity Allen Iverson. I don't see Allen Iverson as a sad puppy dog or a wet cat. I don't feel sympathy for Allen Iverson and my guess is that Allen Iverson doesn't want my sympathy. I don't like playing the game of "what could have been" and "if only he ..." Allen Iverson's true and possibly only passion was basketball and his ability to play basketball. Basketball was his singular passion, his one escape, the one place where he felt comfortable, at home, safe. And in that context, it is always heartbreaking to me when that singular passion -- that "one thing you're good at" -- is taken away from someone. When Beethoven or Beatles producer George Martin started to lose their hearing. When a painter loses their eyesight. When a carpenter loses their ability to build. When a brilliant mind is ravaged by Alzheimer's. When an orator loses their voice. When a brilliant professional athlete loses their ability to excite. When you lose that One Thing. What do you do? How do you adjust? How do you react? How do you live the rest of your life? I suppose many can and will extract the "lessons to be learned" from Allen Iverson and his allegedly "tragic" and cautionary tale. However, is AI really a tragic and cautionary tale? Perhaps. Perhaps naively and romantically, I choose to see AI as a person who pursued his passion with a tunnel vision, a person who gave his 100% come hell or high water. There is a naive but noble single-minded determination within Allen Iverson that is confusing and frustrating when people hyper-focus on the details: "We talking about practice. Not a game. Not, not … Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it's my last. Not the game, but we're talking about practice, man. I mean, how silly is that?" -Allen Iverson I think when complex issues arise in sports, politics, religion, culture, whatever, we tend to over-analyze too much, we go down the rabbit-hole and obsess over minutiae and lose perspective, lose sight of the bigger picture. But as The Answer reminds us, "We're talking about practice, man. I mean, how silly is that?"