ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 11, 1997 TAG: 9702110109
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: JIM SPENCER
SOURCE: JIM SPENCER
Reebok calls its newly released Allen Iverson basketball shoe ``The Question.'' But right now, the real question in Iverson's life is why a gifted young professional athlete with such a bright future finds it necessary to carry a gun. According to a story in last week's Washington Post, police at Hampton University found a .45-caliber semi-automatic Glock pistol and a clip of bullets on the front seat of Iverson's Mercedes Benz last September. Police checked the car after someone shot at it on the HU campus.
Iverson was old enough to own the Glock. It was properly registered. The basketball star's felony conviction from a 1993 Hampton bowling alley brawl had been overturned. So there was nothing illegal about him having the handgun.
At the same time something is terribly wrong. When the NBA's likely Rookie of the Year carries around a deadly weapon, he invites unnecessary disaster. Iverson's statement to a Post reporter that ``I'm worried about my safety'' begs more questions than it answers. If Iverson, who is 21, feels the need to be armed for his personal defense off the basketball court, you have to wonder whom he fears. And that raises questions about his circle of acquaintances.
Despite all his past off-court problems, Iverson seems not to have learned that the company he keeps helps define him. It's as simple as the cliche: ``Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.''
Iverson's pals, the folks he's been hanging around with, are enough to make anybody itch. They have torn up at least one motel room in the Newport News area. As detailed by the Post, Iverson's friends include a guy with a 1990 felony conviction in Hampton for possession of cocaine and a 1992 weapons conviction in Newport News. Another guy was charged with maiming in Newport News in a 1994 shooting where a stray bullet killed a bystander. The maiming charge never went to trial, prosecutors said, because witnesses refused to testify.
Public opinion doesn't need frightened witnesses to talk. A celebrity's image and consumer purchasing decisions form around a much lower standard of proof than the courts demand.
On the other hand, as gangsta rap musicians Snoop Doggy Dogg and Tupac Shakur prove, playing the rebel in modern society can strike a note with your generation and make you a millionaire.
Of course, as in the case of Shakur, it also can make you dead.
This raises yet another question: Why tempt fate if you're already a multi-millionaire for a perfectly legitimate reason?
With his basketball skills, Allen Iverson can choose to project any image he wants. He can choose his friends. And he certainly can afford to hire bodyguards if he's afraid.
Bubbachuck, as Iverson is known to his pals, may enjoy the figure he cast in a recent photo for GQ magazine, where he appeared stripped to the waist with his pants hanging halfway down his underwear and his hands cupped over his crotch. But he should realize that the company he keeps and the defiant look he cultivates betray everyone who stuck their necks out to support him during and after his criminal trial and everyone who risked their reputations by insisting on an Allen Iverson Day in Hampton last year.
He also would do well to remember that while his misfit look may play well for a time in the marketplace, he is not invincible.
It doesn't matter what ``The Question'' is. Here's the answer:
Guns and cocaine take you to jail and rehab, not the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Jim Spencer is a sports columnist for the Newport News Daily Press.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Iversonby CNB