I always thought the end of Allen Iverson’s career would come in a flash. Too strong was his love for the game, and at the same time, too strong was his own pride, to let his career unravel slowly. He would not let us see him become a ghost of his former self as so many veterans do.

To me, it always seemed that Iverson was a man who would rather die on his feet than live on his knees – if couldn’t be Allen Iverson any longer, he wouldn’t pretend otherwise.

It gives me no pleasure to find out that I seem to have been right.

This is not how it should end for Iverson. This should not be his legacy, of a failed experiment in Memphis and then a quick decent into seemingly becoming a pariah. And yet here we are. After three games in Graceland, Iverson has announced his “retirement”, a term I place in quotations only because I am not precisely sure what it means.

Would he come back to play if Danny Ainge or Greg Popovich called him next week? I have a feeling he would. Would it work out? That I am not so sure about. But what I can say with some certainty is that the product of Georgetown has reached the unequivocally reached the stage of his career I mentioned in the first paragraph.

Allen Iverson is no longer Allen Iverson.

What exactly does that mean though? What is it to say that Iverson is no longer who we knew him to be? To properly understand his legacy, I believe that some posthumous glorification is called for. Maybe not a career eulogy, as I do not mean to lionize him too much, but at the very least it needs to be remembered how truly remarkable and raw an athlete he was.

I have never in my life seen someone quicker and more electrifying than a young Iverson in his rookie and sophomore seasons. Before the endless wear and tear he put his body through caught up to him, he was a controlled blur the likes of which put Isiah Thomas and Bob Cousy to shame.

He possessed an elusiveness we had seen only in football from the likes of Barry Sanders and Walter Payton, but with the heart of a bullfighter.

And this is to make no mention of his hops. Before his ankles and knees betrayed him, Iverson could catch anyone in the league if they were napping and put them on a poster. Ask Marcus Camby if you don’t believe me.

His legacy will be that of the anti-hero, the counter culture rebel who never backed down from what he believed or who he was, and who won the respect of the masses, not the establishment, as a result.

He shook Michael Jordan with a crossover that will live for as long as there is a NBA and in doing so he wasn’t just sidestepping a legend, but rather he was accidentally giving a voice to a generation tired with over-protected, over-polished players that doubled as corporate robots. In that way, some saw him as the face of a lost generation of NBA stars who were not respectful or appreciative enough of their forefathers.

In reality, he was simply being himself and refusing to apologize for it.

Conscience does cost though. Being himself is also what caused Iverson a great deal of self-made grief. From the “practice” rant to his public battles with numerous coaches and executives, Iverson always allowed himself to be cast as a villain by others simply by being too real, too raw for them to deal with.

He gave his critic ample fuel to detract from his brilliant talents: he cost a number of coaches their jobs because they would not subscribed to his self-serving playing style; he only succeeded when playing me-first basketball; he saw very limited playoffs success other than in 2001; his teams seemed to improve after his departure (see last year’s Nuggets as a prime example); and he was never efficient in his scoring but instead was a selfish, volume-driven shooter.

The NBA instituted a dress code almost exclusively because of the hip-hop sensibility that he popularized within the league. His determined sense of individualism and trust in himself brought braids, tattoos, and hundred-thousand dollar chains to the American social consciousness.

But he also brought a fire and drive that any one could respect. The man they called The Answer would do whatever he had to to his body in the name of trying to win. Maybe he only accepted trying to win on his own terms, but I’d be hard pressed to think of a player in my life that did more with less.

Without question, he belongs in any discussion of the game’s greatest “little men”, players whose size and weight had no barring on their determination and success. Like Isiah Thomas or Nate Archibald before him, Iverson played bigger than his size, and often did so while injured from exactly that same sort of reckless resolve to score by any means necessary. Iverson played hard every single night, which sadly is not something that can often be said anymore.

He was a hero to kids like Carmello Anthony and Brandon Jennings, only to eventually become their peer. Whether Iverson has played his last game or not doesn’t matter really – he has already passed the torch onward to those players of today and tomorrow, a generation of players who grew up in awe of this flawed, selfish, reckless, defiant, proud little man who killed giants.

That Allen Iverson is finished. And whether he unretires in the future or not, that will not change.

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