From the crossover to the step over, here are our Top 10 Allen Iverson moments with the Sixers

Allen Iverson played 12 seasons with the 76ers, producing incalculable signature moments and leaving an indelible mark on Philly.

One such moment came 23 years ago, when Iverson secured an overtime win against the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on June 6, 2001. With 55 seconds left, Iverson caught the ball and created an all-time moment, dropping Lakers guard Tyronn Lue to the court before scoring a fadeaway and stepping over the awestruck defender.

That anniversary got us thinking about Iverson’s legendary tenure with the Sixers. Here are our top 10 moments from his time in Philly.

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The start of Iverson’s career has so many moments of playing well above the rim. As a rookie against the Seattle SuperSonics, Iverson showed off his 41-inch vertical leap on two Derrick Coleman missed shots. The first came on a Coleman air-ball and Iverson ran baseline to grab the ball with his left hand, making the misfire look like a perfect lob. Later, with Coleman at the free-throw line, Iverson emerged to slam home a one-hand dunk.

The dunks didn’t end there. Iverson was listed at 6-foot and 165 pounds, but that didn’t stop him from banging bodies in the lane. One of the best examples of that came in 1998, when Iverson timed an Eric Snow missed jump shot and traveled from the three-point line to complete a tip dunk over 7-foot Marcus Camby and the Toronto Raptors.

Iverson was playing All-Star caliber basketball by the end of his rookie season, putting together a string of scoring performances that looked like this: 44, 40, 44, 50, and 40 points. He averaged 43.6 points over a five-game span at only 21 years old. Let that sink in. The most impressive night came when he scored 50 points on the road in a 1997 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, becoming the only rookie since the ABA/NBA merger to score 50 points in a road game.

While he often had little scoring help, Iverson never shrunk from the moment in the playoffs. It’s hard to whittle down his standout playoff performances but we’ll focus on Iverson’s 55-point performance against the New Orleans Hornets. That showing on April 20, 2003, still stands as a Sixers postseason record. Iverson also owns the next two closest performances, at 54 and 52 points.

The 1996 NBA draft was an all-time class, with Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen, Steve Nash, Stephon Marbury, and Camby among the players selected in the first round. But even in a class that featured multiple Hall of Famers, there was little doubt that Iverson would take Rookie of the Year. The Sixers struggled but he soared, eclipsing 50 points once, 40 points four times, and 30 points on a whopping 20 occasions. He averaged 23.5 points, 7.5 assists, and 4.1 rebounds.

Iverson basically ran the table in the 2000-01 season, starting with his All-Star Game MVP award win. With the Eastern Conference trailing by 21 points in the final nine minutes, a select group took it upon themselves to wage one of the best comebacks in the event’s history. Iverson scored 25 points — including 15 in the fourth — in the 111-110 victory. He also created a few memorable plays, most notably delivering a lob to himself before a reverse layup.

Iverson’s performance against the Raptors in the 2001 Eastern Conference semifinals was prolific in every sense of the word. He scored more than 50 points to lead the Sixers to two wins — 54 in Game 2 and 52 in Game 5 — and ran the show in Game 7, dishing out 16 assists in a one-point win and sharing an emotional moment with his mother afterward.

At 25 years old, Iverson delivered his masterpiece. He won MVP after a 2000-2001 season in which he averaged 31.1 points, 4.6 assists, 3.8 rebounds, and 2.5 steals for the 56-26 Sixers, who went on to face the Lakers in the NBA Finals. Iverson produced a season chalk full of signature moments. He became the Sixers’ first MVP since Moses Malone in 1983, receiving 93 of a possible 124 first-place votes, outpacing the San Antonio Spurs’ Tim Duncan and the Lakers’ Shaquille O’Neal.

A cultural icon, not all of Iverson’s signature moments were on the court. But while Iverson wielded influence over fashion, sneaker culture, and the Black community at large, his most known off-the-court moment was about practice. Iverson, who is now older and wiser, has discussed the incident and addressed it on several fronts. Reeling after the death of a childhood friend, Iverson didn’t attend practice and was questioned by media members who were largely unaware he was grieving. Rather than receive condolences, he was peppered with criticism.

“I’m upset for one reason: ‘Cause I’m in here. I lost. I lost my best friend. I lost him, and I lost this year,” Iverson said during the 35-minute rant. “Everything is just going downhill for me, as far as just that. You know, as far as my life. And then I’m dealing with this. … My best friend is dead. Dead. And we lost. And this is what I have to go through for the rest of the summer until the season is all over again.”

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Iverson later added more context in a 2024 interview with Rachel Nichols: “People say it was the funniest thing in the world. And I was like … to me, it was not funny. Like you had no idea what I was going through in my life. And I wish I could take it back and do it another way. I wouldn’t have gotten on the podium. And you know I would explain to people like basically how do you think I do all of these things on the basketball court and you can look at my resume. There’s no way you can do all these things without practicing.”

Iverson, a Reebok poster boy and the No. 1 pick in the historic 1996 draft, was looked at as one of the next great players as Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan was nearing the end of his career. So when their teams met for the third time on March 12, 1997, with Jordan and Iverson pitted against each other in Philly, the crowd rose to its feet and prepared for two all-time talents to face off. Iverson delivered, lulling Jordan to sleep with a small crossover before delivering the full brunt of his patented move and finishing a free-throw line jumper over Jordan’s outstretched hand.

And while that moment has endured, Iverson’s performance was far greater than that one snapshot. In a time when scoring was harder to come by, Iverson produced 37 points in a close loss to Jordan’s Bulls.

Also, in Jordan’s defense, he did catch on to Iverson’s move and defended him well in future meetings. Perhaps the best example is this Jan. 15, 1998, game, when Bulls players bite on Iverson’s crossover repeatedly, with Jordan being the lone exception.

On June 6, 2001, Iverson led a ragtag group of players into Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Goliath of Goliaths, facing off against O’Neal, Bryant, and a Lakers team that had rolled through the NBA playoffs without a single loss. That changed as Iverson willed his team to a surprising 107-101 Game 1 victory at Staples Center.

Iverson scored 48 points, but the punctuation mark on his performance is what is remembered best. In the corner guarded tightly by Lue, Iverson drove hard toward the baseline before pulling the ball back between his legs and rising for a fadeaway. In typical Iverson fashion, he added a piece of flair at the end, stepping over Lue as he sat on the floor in amazement.

That moment would be the peak of the Sixers’ Finals appearance as they went on to lose four straight and the Lakers won the first title in their three-peat. The Sixers haven’t advanced beyond the second round since.

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