“That mothe**ucker Dame Dolla is up there with Michael Jordan”: When Allen Iverson placed Damian Lillard on a pedestal with His Airness and Kobe Bryant on All The Smoke podcast

Allen Iverson is perhaps the greatest pound-for-pound basketball player to ever step on an NBA court. Damian Lillard isn’t far behind, either.

In a day and age when the word ‘loyalty’ stands basically for ‘who pays me the most tonight?’, Damian Lillard is a true breath of fresh air. Despite all of his disappointments in Portland, it seems well-nigh impossible for Dame to let the Blazers go.

This fierce brand of loyalty is something that Lillard got, in no small part, from the likes of Allen Iverson himself. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, The Answer was synonymous with Philly and the Sixers – just like Dame and the Blazers.

There goes an old English saying which states ‘mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent recognizes genius’. In simpler American terms, this saying translates to ‘game recognize game’. And that’s exactly the kind of recognition that AI gave Dame Dolla some 20 months back.

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Allen Iverson puts Damian Lillard alongside Michael Jordan on his list of favorite NBA legends

Iverson was a guest with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on the ‘All the Smoke’ podcast on a couple of occasions. One of those occasions came about in September 2020, when the Bubble Playoffs were still being played.

Allen Iverson was asked about a list of his favorite players – those who he loves to root for. Given the era he played in and grew up idolizing, his first couple of choices were pretty obvious – Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal.

AI then threw in some nice words for the greatest shooter of all time in Stephen Curry. And finally, he named Damian Lillard on this exclusive list, and you can all guess the reason why he got Dame Dolla into the conversation – this heavily undervalued phrase called loyalty:

“I just love (Jordan) so much, and Kobe is the closest thing — to me — to Mike. And then LeBron is just, hands down, LeBron James. He’s in a class by himself, you know what I mean?”

“And then, Shaq. And I just … y’all know how I feel about Steph Curry. But that motherf—er Dame ‘Dolla…”

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