MVP: Most Vehement Player

THIS WAS the news conference in which Allen Iverson took us to a place we never have been. This was the news conference in which the 76ers’ star guard, the NBA’s scoring champion, allowed us inside.

He showed us his deepest, rawest emotions. He showed us a swirl of feelings that danced from anger to frustration to cynicism to bemusement to sheer pain.

There were, at times, the beginnings of tears in his eyes. There was an edge in his voice that reporters have experienced occasionally in his six seasons, but rarely to this degree. During the news conference, televised live by Comcast SportsNet, Iverson laced his remarks with the obscenity s---, and once, f---.

But in that dark place to which Iverson took us, he tried desperately to show us who he is, why he is the way he is and why he is not about to change. He came out of a meeting earlier in the day with Sixers coach Larry Brown and general manager Billy King in which he said he and Brown agreed both would remain with the team. But instead of finding joy or satisfaction in the moment, he chose to slam questions back at reporters, blocking their paths perhaps the way he had hoped teammate Dikembe Mutombo would have blocked the paths of the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs.

The 30-minute session left even more questions:

Q. Will things ever be the same between Iverson and Brown?

A. That depends on your perspective. Iverson, as he has since the day he arrived with the Sixers as the No. 1 pick in the 1996 draft, insisted that he wanted to remain a Sixer for life, that he had no interest in being traded. He said, as he has many times, that he loved his coach, that Brown has helped him have the success he has had.

"If there's no Larry Brown, there's no MVP Allen Iverson,'' he said.

But he also said they're not "tight as I thought we was by this s--- happening right now''; he is still fuming that Brown told reporters Saturday that the team's best player had to be at practice, had to do things the right way. The implication seemed to be, if Brown had a problem with Iverson's habits, that should have been discussed between them, behind closed doors.

Amid all of this, Iverson said very clearly that he wanted to play for Brown, that they would be back next season.

"I just let him know I'm that pit bull in his yard, and if anybody tries to intrude, I'm going to be the one that's going to bite and protect his home,'' Iverson said.

But Iverson was also upset ("No question'') with Brown's going public with his comments.

"When you lose, there's a whole bunch of room for negativity,'' he said. "I don't feed into all this stuff. I don't do no talking. I don't run my mouth. If coach has any issues with me, I believe they are issues I can control, things I can get a grip on."

Q. How important was it that Iverson was the only Sixer to skip Saturday's exit meeting with Brown?

A. Brown said he was "crushed." But Brown also said that he and Iverson had not met individually immediately after any of the four previous seasons. Sometimes, a player feels a meeting the day after a disappointing conclusion to a season is the wrong time to meet with the coach. Getting together yesterday might well have been a good idea for both parties.

Q. Iverson professed his love for Brown, but what exactly is it that Iverson loves about him?

A. "Him,'' Iverson said. "As a man. That's what I care about Larry Brown. The man. The coach, that's totally different." Iverson called Brown "the best coach in the world . . . I ain't never met a coach better than Larry Brown. Never in my life. That doesn't have nothing to do with why I'm in here right now [meeting with reporters]."

That could have been a reference to Brown's old-school ways, demanding that everyone practice, that everyone be on time. Beyond that, Iverson thinks he is being singled out, not being treated as a franchise player. That is why he shrugs off that mantle.

Q. What was really troubling Iverson?

A. He was furious that his 7-year-old daughter, Tiaura, had been bombarded by friends at school, asking whether her daddy was going to be traded or why people didn't like her daddy or why people were saying nasty things about her daddy.

Above all else, he holds dear the privacy and happiness of his wife and two children. Any controversy that swirls around him and somehow affects them, he considers a huge infringement.

Q. Beyond that, what was eating at Iverson's soul?

A. He explained that, in the course of the season, he had lost his best friend, his team had been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs after going all the way to the Finals the previous season, and rather than being able to go home and cope with all of that, he had to face another round of questions from prying reporters.

Rahsaan Langeford, his closest friend, was shot to death outside his home in Newport News, Va., last October. Iverson was a pallbearer at the funeral. During the season, Iverson wore a pad on his left elbow inscribed "Ra,'' for Langeford. He would touch that pad with his right hand before every free throw he attempted.

Iverson has maintained a close relationship with many of his friends from his early days growing up in Virginia, but dislikes them being referred to as "a posse." Several of his friends attended the news conference.

Q. How did he feel about the speculation that, because he had not followed Brown's precepts of practicing and being on time, he could be traded?

A. Iverson openly challenged the concept, saying that, "If you trade somebody, you trade him to make the team better." But to even entertain the possibility of trading him because he didn't practice enough, or missed practices, or wasn't on time, he found ludicrous.

After completing exit meetings Saturday with every player other than Iverson, Brown said that anyone who didn't follow the rules wasn't going to be here.

That immediately spawned media and Internet speculation about whether the Sixers could ever receive equal value for their star. None of this speculation ever came from the Sixers. Still, Iverson seemed hurt and angry that any of this was even being discussed.

Q. And wasn't there also the issue of being termed a "franchise player''?

A. "I don't feel like I'm the franchise player, because - look at this press conference, look at what we're talking about,'' Iverson said. "I'm the best player; I feel I'm the best player. I believe that. I feel like I'm the best player in the world. But franchise players don't go through this. Franchise players' daughters don't have to go to school and hear, 'Is your daddy coming back?'; 'What's going on with your daddy and coach Brown?' . . . She's 7 years old and that's what she's got to deal with. It hurt, because I know I'm better than that."

Iverson believes that he plays harder than anyone and that whether he practices should not be an issue. He laughed at the suggestion that he could make his teammates better by practicing.

"How the hell can I make my teammates better by practicing?'' he asked. "They're supposed to be used to playing with me anyway . . . So my game is going to deteriorate if I don't practice with those guys? Is my game going to get worse?"

He scoffed at the suggestion that additional conditioning and training could help him shoot a better percentage and, in so doing, help his team win more games. He insisted he "might have missed one practice this year.''

Q. Even though Iverson, over and over, has said he wants to be a Sixer, there was a published report that had him telling friends in the last few days, "I'm gone." What about that?

A. "You think I want to leave here?'' he said sharply. " . . . It ain't a whole bunch to that. You ain't hearing it from nobody else, you're hearing it from me." He followed that, in response to another question, by saying, "Hell, yeah, I'm coming back." But he laughed derisively when he was asked whether he had asked Brown whether he would be back with the Sixers.

"I ain't goin' nowhere, and Larry Brown ain't goin' nowhere,'' he said. "Yeah, he told me that. Both [things]."

Q. Was Iverson on time for the news conference?

A. By my watch, he walked in 5 minutes early, disappeared briefly into the locker room to speak with Sixers officials, then came right back out.

Until someone shows me different, I’ll take that as a good sign.