Talkin' About Practice, Man

Please forgive me as I digress for one light blue moment. Two days ago I referred to the Allen Iverson notorious practice quote. If you have not seen it, please click on this link. You will need to watch the entire, glorious 2 minutes and 22 seconds to get the full impact. And for your reading enjoyment I have copied the highlights of AI's rant below. Read on as he explains how him practicing really doesn't help the team overall. Classic.

Reporter: "Could you clear about your practicing habits since we can't see you practice?"

Iverson: "If Coach tells you that I missed practice, then that's that. I may have missed one practice this year but if somebody says he missed one practice of all the practices this year, then that's enough to get a whole lot started. I told Coach Brown that you don't have to give the people of Philadelphia a reason to think about trading me or anything like that. If you trade somebody, you trade them to make the team better...simple as that. I'm cool with that. I'm all about that. The people in Philadelphia deserve to have a winner. It's simple as that. It goes further than that.

Reporter: "So you and coach Brown got caught up on Saturday about practice?"

Iverson: "If I can't practice, I can't practice. It is as simple as that. It ain't about that at all. It's easy to sum it up if you're just talking about practice. We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we're talking about practice. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about practice. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game last it's my last but we're talking about practice man. How silly is that? Now I know that I'm supposed to lead by example and all that but I'm not shoving that aside like it don't mean anything. I know it's important, I honestly do but we're talking about practice. We're talking about practice man. We're talking about practice. We're talking about practice. We're not talking about the game. We're talking about practice. When you come to the arena, and you see me play, you've seen me play right, you've seen me give everything I've got, but we're talking about practice right now."

Reporter: "But it's an issue that your coach continues to raise?"

Iverson: "Hey I hear you, it's funny to me to, hey it's strange to me too but we're talking about practice man, we're not even talking about the game, when it actually matters, we're talking about practice."

Reporter: "Is it possible that if you practiced, not you but you would make your teammates better?"

Iverson: "How in the hell can I make my teammates better by practicing? "

Reporter: "So they can be used to playing with you."