DATE: Wednesday, August 6, 1997             TAG: 9708060642

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MICHAEL WILBON, THE WASHINGTON POST 
                                            LENGTH:   95 lines

NO USE IN REPRIMANDING IVERSON; HE ISN'T LISTENING

There's no sense in preaching to Allen Iverson anymore, because all the indications are he ain't listening. John Thompson is one of the most persuasive men you'll ever meet, but Iverson isn't listening to his college coach anymore. He didn't listen to the man who freed him from jail and granted him conditional clemency, then-governor of Virginia, L. Douglas Wilder. He hasn't listened to the no-nonsense, tough-love advice from Patrick Ewing. He hasn't listened to the Reebok executives who have told him his associations and behavior could cost him millions in endorsements. He wouldn't listen to some common-sense counsel from Michael Jordan. He certainly hasn't listened to his mother, Ann, who drove up to Philadelphia last season and threw his leech boyz out of her son's apartment.

Some of the smartest, wisest, hardest-working people - many of whom have genuine interest in this 22-year-old - have made themselves and their experience available to Iverson at no cost whatsoever, but he obviously couldn't give a damn. If you aren't with him and his crew, you're in the way and you may get run over, or if you're lucky, just ignored.

This isn't about baggy pants or what kind of hat he's wearing or what the public at large thinks of the image he projects. This is about the kid's life. Anybody who was shocked by his arrest Sunday would have to be naive. Even some of his acquaintances feared Iverson would get into trouble this summer. We're talking about a kid who has already had one automobile pumped with bullets. Now, Sunday morning, here he is involved on some level with a handgun, marijuana and driving 93 mph in a 65-mph zone. Let me suggest this to the Iverson apologists, many of whom would find some lame reason to excuse him from anything: When you mix a handgun, driving 93 mph and drugs, you're on a collision course with death or destruction. Any one of those three by itself can be a killer, and we're talking about all three together.

But of course, to be young, famous and incredibly wealthy in today's culture means thinking, ``I'm invincible. Nothing can touch me.'' It means having a camp of yes-men and bodyguards and sycophants who drain the Iversons of the world dry financially while telling them they can, and should, do whatever they want whenever they want, sometimes for no better reason than, ``You tha man! You bigger than the NBA. You bigger than some Michael Jordan!'' Happens every day, every city in America. Some kids realize what's going on and pull away, others delicately straddle the fence, and a few others are either too weak, too defiant or too blind to see the train bearing down on them.

Either way, if Iverson wants to choose his boyz and criminal behavior over all else, it's his business. Don't hand me this garbage about how young he is. He keeps telling us he's a grown man and he can make choices; fine, let's take him on his word. He's old enough to make choices, he's old enough to live with the consequences. And they can be severe. Being arrested might be getting off lightly compared with running 93 mph into a tree and winding up paralyzed for life. Or compared to getting his brains blown out. Entourages didn't do a lot for rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, did they? Or compared with ingesting some illegal substance.

We've come a long way since Len Bias' death. Most of us ran out of sympathy long ago for young men who've been blessed with athletic talent and subsequent riches, then self-destruct while blaming everything from ghetto life to the media for their demise.

What was a tragedy in 1986, when Bias died after a night of partying with cocaine, is plain stupid now. If Allen Iverson wants to risk his professional basketball career, tens of millions of dollars, and a chance to uplift his family and friends, so be it. Let's just hope he and his boyz don't hit any innocent children while driving 93 mph or ``accidentally'' shoot some bystander. If he can't keep certain thug friends at arm's distance, Iverson will reap what he sows.

You ask Iverson about his ``friends'' and his response often includes, ``I don't worry about other people's friends, so why should they worry about mine?''

Because some of them have no regard for anybody, certainly not him, that's why. Their individual rights end where somebody else's begin. There are people whom he once listened to who are trying to tell him this, unsuccessfully. This very summer they've warned him: ``Allen, you've got to stop rolling like this.'' His actions say he just doesn't care.

He isn't the first kid to have irresistible buddies who've been there for him since the crib. Anybody who grows up in an urban environment has boyz who are always on the wrong side of something, often the law. It's hard saying goodbye to them when you know you all started at the same place in life and formed bonds you figured ran too deep to ever be broken. It's difficult, but people break away all the time, every day. You realize the future holds so much more than the past, and you do what's necessary to maximize your potential, which in urban America often begins with just staying alive.

This isn't a minor problem Iverson has, it's a major obstacle that can ruin him. He can't lead a basketball team to anything until he can lead himself away from troubling influences. Those close to him, who care about him, are going to have to figure out how to get his ear, how to make him see that a 93-mph joyride with a gun and a joint can't lead to anything good in a million years. They're going to have to find a way to convince him that turning away from dangerous, irresponsible behavior doesn't make him a traitor to his boyz; it's a first step toward living long enough to fulfill some of those multimillion dollar contracts he's signed. It's got to be somebody who's not a groupie, somebody who's not a knucklehead with his hand out, somebody with courage enough to say the tough things Iverson doesn't want to hear. First, though, it's got to be somebody to whom Allen Iverson will actually listen.

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