THIS WAS the news conference in which Allen Iverson took us to a place we never have been. This was the news conference in which the 76ers? star guard, the NBA?s scoring champion, allowed us inside.
He showed us his deepest, rawest emotions. He showed us a swirl of feelings that danced from anger to frustration to cynicism to bemusement to sheer pain.

There were, at times, the beginnings of tears in his eyes. There was an edge in his voice that reporters have experienced occasionally in his six seasons, but rarely to this degree. During the news conference, televised live by Comcast SportsNet, Iverson laced his remarks with the obscenity s---, and once, f---.

But in that dark place to which Iverson took us, he tried desperately to show us who he is, why he is the way he is and why he is not about to change. He came out of a meeting earlier in the day with Sixers coach Larry Brown and general manager Billy King in which he said he and Brown agreed both would remain with the team. But instead of finding joy or satisfaction in the moment, he chose to slam questions back at reporters, blocking their paths perhaps the way he had hoped teammate Dikembe Mutombo would have blocked the paths of the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs.