Big Ben & Iverson

Stars, and their careers, include stark differences, striking similarities
Big Ben and AI
by Keith Langlois

Allen Iverson and Ben Wallace’s careers have charged along on parallel paths – in alternate universes.
Iverson was the No. 1 pick in the 1996 draft – the draft that saw Ben Wallace bypassed completely. While Iverson was averaging 23.5 points and winning Rookie of the Year that season, Wallace – after failing Boston’s loony experiment to turn him into a small forward during Summer League – hooked on as a free agent with Washington and averaged 1.1 points in 34 games.

While Iverson was rocketing past superstar status to cultural icon in Philadelphia, Wallace was bouncing from Washington to Orlando to the Pistons, where he landed in a sign-and-trade deal as a footnote to perhaps the darkest day in franchise history, when Grant Hill – assumed by many to be heir to Michael Jordan’s legacy at the time – bolted as a free agent.

And while Iverson was winning the 2001 MVP award for taking an underwhelming Philadelphia roster to the NBA Finals, Wallace was settling in as the starting center for Joe Dumars’ first season as Pistons president with an inherited roster that needed several upgrades to get to underwhelming.

Yet for all their surface differences in size and skill sets and status, and for all their even more stark differences in makeup, Wallace and Iverson are not without their similarities, either.

Both are immensely proud men. Ask anyone remotely familiar with the NBA over the last 15 years to make a list of the guys who leave everything they’ve got on the floor, the list doesn’t get past five without both of their names. Within a few months of each other in 2006, both left the cities they came to personify – Philadelphia in Iverson’s case, Detroit in Wallace’s. And within a few months of each other in 2009, both returned to those cities with something left to prove.

To outsiders, at least. Suggest anything of the sort to Ben Wallace – that coming home has resuscitated his career, perhaps - and be prepared to take a step back.

“My career already was established after I left here,” he said after Tuesday’s practice, with the Pistons about to embark to Philadelphia, where Iverson – less than two weeks after his “retirement” made his return to the 76ers in Monday’s loss to Denver – and a team that’s lost 10 straight to fall to 5-16. “His career has already been established. He’s just in a place where he’s comfortable playing basketball.”

Iverson played almost 38 minutes in Philly’s 10-point loss, despite not having played in weeks, and all four other starters played more than him. Philadelphia, largely out of necessity, has gone back to its big lineup with Samuel Dalembert and Elton Brand starting up front and athletic third-year player Thaddeus Young at small forward with Andre Igoudala at shooting guard.