AMERICAS TOP ATHLETE With blinding speed and a new belief in team play, Allen Iverson is simply unstoppable Have you ever tried to start a bar brawl over who America's best social critic might be? Unless you're drinking at George Plimpton's, it's impossible. Perhaps that's why we decided to test your taste for controversy with our choice for America's Best athlete. Still: Allen Iverson is the nation's paragon of athletic skill? Really?  Actually, yes. Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong would have been excellent, if somewhat predictable choices. Both have won more than Iverson, both carry themselves with classic grace and dignity. But their sports do not test the full range of what most Americans consider athleticism. They're specialists; what's more, in sports that don't say much about our national character.  Basketball players are the best athletes in the world, and that's not just the NBA marketing machine talking. Today's game requires track-star speed and agility, the hand-eye coordination of a .300 hitter and the ability to withstand linebacker-style punishment delivered by guys who are often much bigger than linebackers. Iverson, 26, a former Virginia high school quarterback phenom, takes hits without fear. He's developed a jump shot that's excellent from 24 feet away and deadly at midrange. Then there's his speed. In his college days at Georgetown, sports photographers actually had to ditch their autofocus cameras in favor of more sensitive manual equipment — Iverson was showing up as only a blur.  NBA defenses key on Iverson in much the same way they focused on Michael Jordan. Iverson doesn't have the luxury of passing off to Scottie Pippen, one reason an NBA championship might not be in the Philadelphia 76ers immediate future. But he still seems to score at will, despite his relative puniness (the 76ers generously list him at 6 feet, 165 pounds) After Iverson torched the Lakers for 48 points in the first game of this year's NBA finals, dealing L.A. their only playoff loss, Laker Robert Horry wondered aloud just how anyone was supposed to defend the little guy: "He can get the jumper anytime he wants, so all you can do is hope he's not hitting it. If he drives, you have to hope the help comes quick enough. There's a lot of hope involved."  Iverson has not always been a model citizen. He did four months in prison after a teenage brawl in a bowling alley (the conviction was later reversed due to insufficient evidence). His first few years in the league, he was openly insubordinate and in poor condition. But he's come around. This year Iverson forged a genuine bond with the 76ers brilliant, exacting coach Larry Brown and decided to become a team leader, a role he used to think was corny. He has also publicly expressed a desire to overcome what he's described as an inbuilt mistrust of authority.  Maybe you don't buy the off-court turnaround, but it's hard not to pull for a guy who is an underdog every time he laces 'em up. Iverson spends his nights jackknifing to the hoop, a tiny salmon challenging grizzlies twice his weight. By season's end, he looks like a man made of adhesive tape. Yet he won't miss games and hates resting so much that coach Brown knows, even in a blowout, it's easier just to leave the kid in. The rest of the NBA wishes he would show a little mercy.		Author Josh Tyrangie   Source TIME Magazine   Return to Articles