Allen Iverson tells his truth in Misunderstood. Read an exclusive excerpt here

Misunderstood: A Memoir was released on October 7, 2025, and can be purchased from Amazon and wherever books are sold.

There was all the criticism of me - my friends, my style, my hair. There were all the losses - they just piled up after the All-Star Game. And there was this now: death. But out of all that difficult shit, I began to, I don’t know how to explain, just move that baggage to the side, and put my game first.

Three days after that terrible night, we had the Bulls on our home floor. The same old shit got repeated. He doesn’t respect Michael Jordan. And as I always said to anybody with a tape recorder and a pen, I revered the man and the player. But on the court, I said it best back then: “I feel like when you over-respect somebody, the battle is already lost.” I didn’t over-respect anyone that night.

As I got to the arena, you could feel it wasn’t some regular game. The Bulls were different. It was a sellout, and this night they stuffed more people into the CoreStates Center than ever before. Our whole squad was healthy for once, but we were mad as hell. We had played in Minnesota the night before and played well until we blew a late lead. It was my first professional matchup against Stephon Marbury. I was so pissed off with that loss and what it meant for the conversation about who should have gone No. 1, who should win the 1996-97 Rookie of the Year. So the bad taste of that was giving me extra motivation.

When the ball went in the air, just like always, everything else disappeared. I had it going early, getting to my spots, making a couple threes, connecting on the midrange, getting steals, setting up my teammates. In the third quarter though, I took it to the next level. I will admit, I was hot enough that I focused on me, my scoring - I just wanted to beat them so bad at that point. The only problem was I got into foul trouble. So I only played thirty-six minutes that night.

It got to the late third quarter, the game tight. Clarence Weatherspoon had the ball on the left side outside the three-point line. When he picked up his dribble, I came up from the baseline around him and took the ball, like a dribble handoff. At the same time, he screened my man, so his man switched onto me.

I just remember hearing Phil Jackson. “Michael! Get up on him!”

And there I was. Directly facing the basket, outside the three-point line, with Michael Jordan staring at me from his defensive crouch. I paused, then backed up for a second. I always knew that if he was guarding me, I would try my move. I told my friends, my family. So when he got on me, I was like, Here we go. That’s why I backed up.

As I retreated, you could hear the crowd respond. Like this is what they came for. Then the volume rose. The anticipation. I gave him a little left-to-right cross first to see if he would bite on it. He did. The crowd reacted. I let him set his feet as I dribbled the ball back to my left hand. Then I hit him with the real one. This time his body went all the way to my left as I crossed over to the right. With space and him almost on the ground (his Jordans saving his ankles), I pulled up just inside the three-point line.

The jumper was cash. The crowd fucking erupted.

I was just glad it went in. Wouldn’t have mattered, even if he had fallen on the ground, if the ball didn’t go in. But I didn’t have time to appreciate it more than a second. Had to get back on D. Mike came right back at us, missed a little jumper, and after Bill Wennington got the offensive rebound, I got called for my fourth foul. Seconds after changing my entire legacy, I was mad as hell they called that shit on me. I had to sit the rest of the third quarter.

Now, I wish I could tell you we won, but it was another close loss. (The Bulls went 69-13 that year and secured the second title in their three-peat.) I scored what was then my career high of 37 points. But they were just too good down the stretch. Scottie Pippen was the one that killed us, as he made everything and scored 31. Dennis Rodman controlled the inside with 17 boards.

I was just playing basketball that night. I had done my move on Mike. I didn’t really pay attention to it, realize the gravity, until the aftermath, once I got the response from everybody else. I remember getting out the locker room pissed off because we lost. My friends were like, Bro that shit was crazy. You did that shit on Michael Jordan. When I went to my normal spot, the Fridays on City Line Avenue, it began to sink in, what I’d done. ESPN showed it over and over. They had all the angles. My friends back home were letting us know - that night all of Newport News and Hampton was on the phone, recounting that shit, celebrating that moment. I got the GOAT.

But just let me tell you how bad and how great Mike was. I hit him with my best move, and he still almost blocked it. If you look, he recovered quick and got his hand up to contest. I got him, and he still almost blocked it.

But he didn’t. Even now little kids don’t say, You’re Allen Iverson. They say, You’re the guy who crossed over Michael Jordan.

My confidence built after that. After all the losing, I just decided I needed to do everything I could, and if that meant me scoring, then that’s what it would be. Couple days later, we played the Timberwolves again, and this time we finished. I had 24 points and 8 assists, as we beat them by fourteen. While we weren’t going to make the playoffs, I felt like I was figuring it out.

As the calendar turned to April and the end of the season approached, it started to seem more and more like it was just me and Jerry Stackhouse. We got hit with more injuries. Derrick Coleman missed the last month of the season, Scott Williams was out . . . it went on and on. We had so many guys sitting, we only dressed nine dudes for a few games. With so little to play for, what motivation was there? The games, goddammit. And I admit it meant a lot to me to try and win the Rookie of the Year. That award also motivated the Sixers, who wanted something positive to sell as the season drew to a close. The last few weeks of the season, that rookie year, encapsulated the shit I faced, the man I became. By the end of that season, I just embraced my way of being both on the court - putting on a show, trying my hardest, taking on personal goals - and off the court - sticking with my friends, expressing myself through my style. And because of this expression of myself, I had become a target for a certain type, guardians of basketball tradition, whether it be old-head players retired or still in the league, or out-of-shape reporters pontificating about my me-first game and hood style.

The streak started against the Bulls on April 7. With just eight games left, we were coming off a heartbreaker against the Hornets, where I had scored 32 points, with 10 rebounds and 7 assists, and I played all forty-eight minutes. With only nine guys, Coach Johnny Davis didn’t have much choice other than to let me play. I’d gone more than forty-four minutes for five straight games. Coach Davis said, “He doesn’t want to come out. He’d play forty-eight minutes of all eighty-two games. You can’t do that, but he’d try it.”

So against the Bulls this time, it was the full forty-eight minutes. I scored 44 points, full throttle start to finish, even when the game was already lost. It was a Sixers rookie record for points in a game. But it was them that throttled us, clinching playoff home-court advantage in the process. We were a long way from that. They said Mike was on the bench watching me fly around, shaking his head. He supposedly asked the reporters during the game, “Was I a one-man offense like that when I was a rookie?”

The next game was against the Hawks at home. Unable to defend down low with all the injuries, we got beat again. With me playing the full forty-eight minutes, I scored 40. I was the first rookie to have back-to-back 40-point games since Elvin Hayes (the man who’d criticized my game for being too selfish!). Mike hadn’t done it.

There was excitement but at the same time, as always, there was the criticism. Dude is scoring forty-plus but can’t win. Most teams out of playoff contention were making travel plans at that point. As the guys would say on Inside the NBA, they’d “gone fishing.” That wasn’t me though. One thing I never did was cheat the games. We had six left in a lost season, so the criticism to me sounded like, He’s playing too hard. Don’t he know they lost their season?

Yeah, I was going to try hard even when our season was lost. If that made me selfish, so be it.

So after those two 40-point games, we traveled to Milwaukee. And that night, my shots were falling again. I had 44. Glenn Robinson scored 40 and Ray Allen had 27. It was tight in the last three minutes, but Sherman Douglas - my crossover’s first victim way back on opening night - got a couple steals off me that helped them seal it.

I said after the game what I felt, that the stats were “meaningless.” “I’m out there playing as hard as I can play, and we just can’t get it done.” Another goddamn loss. But it was also three 40-point games in a row for me. Only Wilt Chamberlain had done that before as a rookie.

So we left Milwaukee with like half a team, all disappointed motherfuckers. The next day was another road game in my favorite city: Cleveland again. They’d booed my ass at the rookie game, booed me again in the game after the break. And sure enough, they booed me during the introductions of this one. And I started off terribly. We got down by as many as 23 in the first half, and I had just 11 points at the break.

The second half was different. Once it started flowing I felt like I could do anything. On one play I got to the paint and through traffic flipped one in almost with my back to the basket. Later, leading a three-on-one break, I started to pass it around my back to Stack on my left, but when I saw the defender go for it, I yanked it back and coasted in for the layup. That made 31. Of course, they couldn’t make it easy. I remember on one play, I had Terrell Brandon on the right side. With the ball in my left hand, paused there for a moment, I hit him with it, left him dusted. Then I heard the whistle behind me. The sound of frustration, man. The motherfucker called palming. I just raced down to the other end mad as hell, but ready to play some defense.

I was going for 40, and I was going for the win. We had worked the lead down to under ten. I just kept driving and shooting and stalking the passing lanes. I reached 40 with a little jumper, then broke my career high with 45. As the time ticked down, I knocked down a pair of free throws to get to 50, 39 of which were in the second half. First rookie to get more than 40 in four consecutive games. Not even Wilt had done that.

As for the game, we kept it close, but we lost. As I made each shot, drove into the lane repeatedly, kept getting up after getting knocked down, the crowd stopped heckling me, the boos dwindled. Beginning in the upper levels and filtering throughout the arena, I started hearing cheers. As I left the court, the crowd stood for me. Even in Cleveland, they saw what I did. Our season was over. Our team was decimated. We were on the back end of back-to-backs in two different Midwest cities. And still, I was playing the game like it was my last.

The next game, we hosted the Bullets and got blown out. With less than a minute left, stuck on 37 points but way, way behind, Coach Davis called a couple of timeouts to run plays for me. With the extra time, and a Bullets defense that didn’t care, I made an uncontested three to continue the streak one last game. I’ll be honest, it didn’t feel great. It was another loss, and this one wasn’t close. I remember even Stack was mad about making the streak the main thing. It had been motivation for me and the team in the season’s final act, but it wasn’t enough if we weren’t winning.

Five straight 40-point games became part of my legacy. I didn’t want my legacy to include the fact that all five went in the L column. But that’s what it became. The media talked about it as if instead of an accomplishment, it was just another failure - just another unique aspect of Allen Iverson to pick on. As I told them then, everything I’d tried to do positive was turned into something negative. Half the team was injured and chose not even to travel with us. On the floor, it was me and Stack working our asses off. I led the team in scoring each game, but I also led in assists each and every game, averaging seven and a half during those five games. We had lost more than five games in a row plenty of times that season - and with our whole team out there - but somehow this was worse because I had tried so hard and scored so much.

I had never lost like this in my life, and I never wanted to again.

The streak ended the next game, and I was glad. A few nights later, the season was over. In all, it was 22 wins and 60 losses. Pat Croce fired both Davis and Brad Greenberg a day later. Me? I needed a break and headed home. It was my first summer rich, and with some time off.

Misunderstood: A Memoir was released on October 7, 2025, and can be purchased from Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Allen Iverson tells his truth in Misunderstood. Read an exclusive excerpt here

Reporting by Allen Iverson, Ray Beauchamp / Hoops Hype

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