Kyle Lowry confirms that referees themselves didn’t know how to handle Allen Iverson, much to the chagrin of the then-rookie.
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Allen Iverson won 4 scoring titles in one of the hardest scoring eras throughout league history. He and Tracy McGrady languished on middling, less talented NBA teams for years before finding any team success.
Iverson eventually faded out of the league once his star power had waned, before he even became a role player. But when he was at his prime, there was possibly no bigger mismatch in the league save for Shaquille O’Neal.
When AI wanted to go downhill on his defender, there was no way in hell that said defender could block him. AI was so twitchy, so unpredictable and so explosive that he’d always have defenders backed up.
This opened up the room for him to start operating on his mid-range, mid-post game. And once he got hot from that range, defenses had to make the unpalatable choice of making him get rid of the ball by doubling.
The Answer simply allowed no answer for his offense from any defensive scheme during his peak years.
Kyle Lowry recounts how Allen Iverson was the first person to bust his as*
Kyle Lowry, Allen Iverson and Gary Payton came together for a classic episode of the Knuckleheads Podcast 3 years back. This was when Lowry was in the middle of a run to the 2019 NBA championship with the Raptors and Kawhi Leonard.
The first question to always be posed to any guest on the Knuckleheads pod has been this: Who’s the first person to bust yo as* in the NBA? Kyle Lowry, fittingly, was a guest on the pod with the very man supposed to be his answer:
“This man to my right! It was my first year, 2nd year in Memphis. I remember something happened and the referee was like ‘What do you want me to do?'”
“The ref was like ‘He’s one of the hardest motherf**kers to referee there is!’ Then I’m like ‘What am I supposed to do?’, to which they reply ‘Stay out of his way!'”
