Tom Lemming remembers the first time he saw Allen Iverson play, back when Iverson was at Bethel High School in Hampton, Virginia. By that time, Iverson was a known quantity. Even in the talent-rich Tidewater region, in eastern Virginia, Iverson's star power stood out, and he was being discussed as a blue-chip recruit. Lemming got on a plane to see for himself.
"He had terrific reaction, instincts, loose hips, and a great vertical," Lemming told VICE Sports. "A lot of people bring it up and ask me how good he was. He was a great player. Not a good player, but a great football player."
In some alternate universe, Iverson might have become the same sort of path-breaking star in football that he ultimately would be in the NBA. The same live-wire athleticism and fearless ferocity that would make him a legend on the court—and, as of Friday's induction in Springfield, a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame—made him a force on the gridiron, too. Iverson fielded scholarship offers from major college football programs at the same time as he weighed basketball offers. The choice he made wound up changing basketball, but Lemming, a well-known national football recruiting analyst for the past 38 years, believes that Iverson could have made an impact if he'd stuck with the sport that was his first love. "He would've made the NFL," Lemming said. "Who knows, he could've been an NFL Hall of Famer."
The Showtime documentary Iverson features footage of Iverson playing football on the fields at Aberdeen elementary school in Hampton for coach Gary Moore, who served as a mentor for Iverson. Moore is now Iverson's personal manager.
"From day one, he actually wanted to jump right in and play," Moore said in the documentary. "He wanted to be my star player. That aggression and that enthusiasm is what I admired most about him. When I saw him dance and move, completely reverse his field all the way back around and not allow any of those kids to touch him, that's when I really said, 'Wow, this boy's something.'"
All the local high schools recruited Iverson. He ended up at Bethel in part because Dennis Kozlowski, the school's football coach and athletics director, had coached Iverson's aunt in high school track and field.
When Iverson was a five-foot-six, 145-pound eighth grader, hundreds of fans would come out to watch him play for Bethel's junior varsity team. The next year, he started at wide receiver and safety on the varsity. In his sophomore season, Kozlowski moved Iverson to quarterback but still played him on defense. As a defensive back, Iverson tied a Virginia record by intercepting five passes in one game and helped Bethel to an undefeated regular season before losing in the first round of the playoffs.
verson committed himself to sports. He played basketball most of the year and only played football from August through December, which didn't seem to hinder his development. As a junior, Iverson led Bethel to the 1992 Virginia state championship against E.C. Glass High School of Lynchburg, which had lost the title game the previous year. A few days before the championship, E.C. Glass coach Bo Henson drove the 200 miles from Lynchburg to Hampton to watch Bethel's semifinal game against Huguenot. Bethel got off to a slow start and trailed 16-0 in the fourth quarter.
"Somebody looked at me and said, 'Hey, don't count 'em out. Iverson's gonna bring 'em back,'" Henson said.
Iverson did just that. He threw a touchdown pass, successfully completed a pair of two-point conversions, and ran for two touchdowns, including a two-yard quarterback sneak in overtime to clinch the 22-16 victory. Before facing Bethel, Henson clipped out newspaper articles on Iverson and placed them on the desk of Tate Gallagher, a student in his history class and E.C. Glass's starting quarterback. Gallagher and others had never heard of Iverson.
"He was trying to warn me how good this person was," Gallagher said.
When Gallagher arrived at City Stadium in Richmond, he wondered what all the fuss was about. During warm-ups, he and his teammates looked over at Iverson getting ready for the game. They weren't too impressed. "We were like, 'Man, his legs look like noodles and his arms like noodles. We got this,'" Gallagher said.
That confidence didn't survive long past kickoff. In the first quarter, Iverson ran for a touchdown and returned a punt 60 yards for another. He later intercepted two passes on defense and threw for 201 yards in Bethel's 27-0 victory, the school's first state championship since 1976. "His speed was just extraordinary," Gallagher said. "He was so quick."
Iverson's heroics didn't surprise Henson, who coached E.C. Glass for 21 years. During that time, he faced future NFL quarterback Michael Vick and receiver Ronald Curry, who was the national high school player of the year as a quarterback in 1996. Neither of those guys compared with Iverson, he says.
