Cultural icon Iverson learns he has to abide by the suits' rules

It would be difficult to overstate the impact Allen Iverson has had, not only on the NBA but on American culture over the past 10 years. Since arriving in the NBA in 1996, Iverson has been a dazzling and unique talent who has captivated the world in a completely unrepentant and rebellious manner.

At the same time that his style has won him a legion of devoted fans, it has exasperated league honchos and the suits that run his Philadelphia 76ers team. He is the most fascinating and intriguing professional athlete in American sports and at the age of only 31 his career has come to a crossroads.

Forced to toil on mediocre teams in Philadelphia, Iverson finally had enough and requested a trade last week. The 76ers, looking to rebuild and exasperated by Iverson's off-court antics, not only agreed to the demand but told him to stay home, with pay of course, until a deal could be done. So now it has come to this for one of the top talents the game has ever seen; he sits and waits to play again, officially at the mercy of his team and the league.

The man known as 'The Answer' clearly tired of playing for one mediocre team after another and it's hard to begrudge someone with his fiercely competitive nature for wanting to move on. Yet, he has hardly helped his cause with numerous off-court legal issues and a very public disdain for practice and team protocol.

We often reap what we sow and it's not like Iverson is forced to scrape by on food stamps, at least not any more. Like so many NBA players, Iverson rose up from unspeakable poverty. His mother gave birth to Allen at the age of 15 and the father almost immediately deserted them. They were forced to live in a flat with an open sewer running through it in a depressing area of Virginia.

Iverson remembers as a youth 'coming home to no lights, no food and sometimes no water'. He was bitter and he would become even more so when he was falsely implicated in a vicious brawl and sentenced to a 15-year jail sentence before being pardoned by the governor of Virginia after spending four months in jail.

By the time Iverson arrived as the first pick in the 1996 NBA draft, his reputation easily preceded him and he did nothing to change it. He told one and all he did not have to respect NBA icon Michael Jordan and was tired of having the rules and roles dictated to him.