Mama's Boys

Four-and-a-half years later, Larry was born. He was an angel, so quiet and gentle. I never had to correct him. Herb was wonderful as well, but he would flare up, more like his father. Larry was like me. I don't think he ever got in trouble, thank God! Does it sound like I'm saying this in conceit? He's so polite, just a very good soul. It's so nice to be nice, don't you think? Now I'm bragging to you, and I don't mean to brag. I'm sorry.

The Sixers did leg lifts at the beginning of practice. Larry lay down and did them with the team. Allen lay still and stared at the ceiling. Then the Sixers and Larry rolled over and did push-ups. Allen rolled over and grunted, but his body didn't leave the floor.

How many NBA coaches stopped practice a half-dozen times to teach their players the right way to execute a pick-and-roll? Exactly where the feet should go, when the teammate should rub past, how the pick-setter's hips should turn to the basket. Larry did. He lived to teach the game. He lived for practices.

Allen listened for a moment. Then his feet did a little hop, his arms a little dance move. Suddenly he hurled a basketball the length of the court. It slammed off die backboard, its echo bouncing off the walls.

We come from slaves down in Georgia. My father's name was Willie Lee Iverson—6'5" and good-lookin', and Papa was a rollin' stone, yeah, yeah. He had 17 children by four women, and I was the oldest one, and they say I'm like him. I didn't wear no dress. I climbed trees and kicked ass. My mother was a waitress. She died when I was 12, when they tied her tubes wrong and her bowels got infected, and that was the most devastatin' thing of my life. I was sittin' in a chair that night with a sheet pulled over my head so I could talk on the phone in privacy, when I hear my sister jessie say, "Ann, somethin' wrong with Mama." Pulled that sheet off and Mama was doubled over.

The ambulance came and I was squeezin' down the steps beside her and I told her I wanted to go with her. She said, "No, you watch jessie and Stevie and Greggy for me." And I said, "I'll do that." I didn't realize it then but I sure did later—she didn't mean watch my sister and brothers just that night. She meant for good.

They had to pay us for the mistake they made on my mother. We got 3,818 dollars and 18 cents. Don't forget that 18 cents.

I cried in bed 'most every night after she died. I remember one night she came to me in a dream and told me to stop cryin', that things would get better. I felt good, seein' her...but there were still roaches runnin' cross the floor when I woke up.

My grandmother decided us four kids needed to stay with her instead of my father. Ethel Mitchell was the sweetest human being. Her husband said he was done raisin' kids, so she gave up her house and her marriage for us, two months after Mama died, and raised us up. Family stayin' together, that's what that woman was all about.

Five months pregnant with Allen Iverson, and I'm still playin' basketball. I'd go into a game and try to take it right then and there, run ahead of all my teammates. "Slow down! Pass the ball!" Coach Evans used to holler at me. Coach would paddle me when I needed it, but she never disciplined me in the street, never in front of people. Never disrespected me. She kept it in the family.