Allen Iverson has revealed the biggest regret of his NBA career.
Iverson appeared on the first episode of “Maxed Out!” a new podcast from his former teammate, Vernon Maxwell, on Bovada’s media network. Iverson was asked about Larry Brown, who coached the Sixers from 1997 to 2003, and prefaced his answer by saying he does not go through life with many regrets.
“Love him to death man,” Iverson said. “I don’t have too many regrets in my life, on and off the court. I feel like a mistake is only a mistake [if] you make it twice. You learn from a lot of s–t that go on in your life. I’m so comfortable in my own skin. I’m happy with the man I’m evolving into, and my maturation. You know, if I died today and had a chance to come back, I would want to come back as me. I mean, what’s wrong with being you? Everyone else was taken up.”
However, Iverson said, he wished he had listened better to Brown in the early years of his playing career.
“I just felt if I had a slight regret to anything that has anything to do with my career, I wouldn’t have been playing tug-of-war with him early in my career,” Iverson said. “You know, like I said, I didn’t know any better. I was trying to mature as a player and as a man.”
The two had very public ups and downs at the time, but Iverson told Maxwell that the player and coach shared common goals.
“He wanted everything that I wanted for myself and for our team, and I didn’t take constructive criticism the way that I was supposed to — and that’s definitely a lesson to be learned for any young dudes out there, is that if they have a great coach, like I had, [listen],” Iverson continued.
“Once I started buying into everything that he was selling, it took me from just a talented player to obviously a Hall of Fame MVP. And our team got a lot better as I grew.”
Iverson and Brown reached the 2001 NBA Finals together, before losing to the Lakers.
“Shout out to coach — I love you,” Iverson said. “I owe a lot to him for who I was as a basketball player, and who I am as a man.”
After leaving the Sixers, Brown won an NBA championship with the Pistons — vanquishing the Lakers — in his first year in Detroit in 2003-04.
