New book claims Allen Iverson was drunk for infamous ‘practice’ rant in 2002

Back in 2002, former 76er Allen Iverson unleashed an epic rant against practice during a press conference — an event for which a newly released book claims the NBA star was drunk.

Written by the Washington Post's Kent Babb, the book in question — Not a Game: The Incredible Rise and Unthinkable Fall of Allen Iverson — reconstructs the circumstances around Iverson's rant through interviews with characters like former 76ers president Pat Croce, ex-coach Larry Brown, and former GM Billy King.

Via 6ABC:

The news conference came on the heels of Iverson showing up late for a meeting with Brown, then arguing with Brown about the player's future in the parking lot of the team facility. According to the book, Brown had said days earlier that any Sixer could be traded, and Iverson asked if he was on the block. Brown said no.

After his talk with Brown, Iverson left with a friend and returned later for the news conference. "I assumed he went and fooled around somewhere," Brown said, tipping his hand up like a bottle, the author wrote in the book.

Before the news conference, King said he could tell that something was off about Iverson, but "if we thought that he was drinking or whatever, we'd have never done it."

Babb also writes that many people close to Iverson and the 76ers watched the news conference in horror, "knowing from experience that Iverson was drunk." Pat Croce, the book says, was one of those people.

So, too, was Daily News sports columnist John Smallwood:

John Smallwood, a Daily News columnist who was in attendance, was also quoted as saying: "He was lit. Had he been sober, he would have been able to get himself out of that. He never would've gone down that path. Maybe you had to have been around him all the time to know the difference, but we all knew."

Iverson would later tell reporters in 2013 that he regretted going forward with the 2002 conference, primarily because he was in a bad place over the then-recent death of his friend, Rahsaan Langford.

"They had no idea my best friend had just got killed," Iverson said in 2013. "The press conference wasn't about practice; it was about me being traded from Philadelphia. Nobody ever talked about that, never heard why I was upset or what the conference was about."

News of Iverson's apparent inebriation during the infamous "practice" rant comes just a couple of weeks after Showtime premiered Iverson, an in-depth look at the former 76er's personal and professional life.

[6ABC]