It’s a strange feeling to see a once-dominant athlete in an unfamiliar uniform. Photos of Michael Jordan in a Wizards jersey still don’t look right. The same can be said for Joe Montana in a Chiefs jersey, Steve Nash in a Lakers jersey, or anything from Dwyane Wade’s recent Chicago Bulls photo shoot.

But even in a world where forgettable images of Patrick Ewing on the Magic and Emmitt Smith on the Cardinals exist, no jersey swap proved as bizarrely brief as Allen Iverson’s tenure with the Memphis Grizzlies.

A.I. signed with Memphis ahead of the 2009-10 season on a one-year, $3.5 million deal. By then, “The Answer” had become one of the biggest question marks of the offseason—he was 34 years old and a far cry from the player who once carried the Sixers to the NBA Finals.

Everyone acknowledged that Iverson was past his prime at that point—except for Iverson. He had left the Pistons the previous season after saying he would rather retire than come off the bench. Although Memphis already had two young starting guards in Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo, the team bought Iverson in to come off the bench.

The logic of this move seemed a bit questionable. Which is why head coach Lionel Hollins wasn’t totally on board.

According to Grizzlies play-by-play man Pete Pranica, this was a move that their late owner, Michael Heisley, spearheaded. Like Iverson, Heisley was a Georgetown product. And who could deny the effect he would have on tickets and merchandise sales?

“Mr. Heisley was very much in favor of adding him to the roster,” Pranica says. “I think [General Manager] Chris Wallace was pretty much like, ‘Look, whatever the owner wants is what we’ll try to get accomplished, and I think Lionel Hollins was fairly circumspect about it.”

It was a sense that Memphis had kind of arrived as a franchise. That ‘Hey, we have Allen Iverson, and he’s going to the Hall of Fame.'

Despite what was due ahead, the Iverson signing was a great day for the franchise. At that time the Grizzlies had made the playoffs just three times in their 15-year existence. Combine this with a small-market setting and you’re not going to land a lot of big-name free agents. So acquiring a legend was truly an occasion. The team held a public press conference for Iverson at FedExForum, the Grizzlies’ home court.

“It was a sense that Memphis had kind of arrived as a franchise,” says Pranica. “That ‘Hey, we have Allen Iverson, and he’s going to the Hall of Fame. And he’s going to play for us!’”

The press conference was nothing short of a madhouse; a large crowd welcomed Iverson to Memphis as he stepped to the podium wearing a Grizzlies cap tilted to the right. He was presented with a Beale Street Blue Gibson Guitar by the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau—a Memphis-style key to the city.

The team even let fans line up and ask Iverson questions, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s Chris Herrington.



At one point, a fan who claimed to have known Iverson from his days as a high schooler in Virginia got ahold of the microphone. The mood of his statement began as lighthearted, if not awkward.

“At one point, a fan gets the microphone and calls him Bubba Chuck, which was his old nickname from Virginia,” Herrington said. “And starts telling him this story about being from Virginia and something about his son being an Iverson fan … and everyone was sort of like rolling their eyes like, ‘What is this weird thing?’”

The mood of the room then experienced a 180.

“And then the guy said something about how his son committed suicide. And that was like the needle on the record,” Herrington said. “It was just such a weird, awkward moment. And that’s what everyone remembers about that press conference—the random guy getting a microphone, calling him Bubba Chuck, and telling a story about his son committing suicide.”

Iverson was caught off guard to say the least.

“He didn’t know what to say,” says Grizzlies sideline reporter and radio host Rob Fischer. “Just, ‘Thanks for the comments. Glad he was a fan. Sorry about your loss.’ It was unlike anything I had seen in a press conference before.”

According to Herrington, that was the last time the team ever gave a microphone to a fan.

Iverson sightings in Memphis were few and far between after that press conference due to a hamstring injury that kept him out of the preseason. A.I. made his second, and final, public appearance in Memphis one late-October Saturday morning, when the Grizzlies held their annual​ open practice at FedExForum.

Although he was injured and not participating in drills, Iverson ran out of the tunnel with his teammates. The team had its eyes on the court. Iverson? He had his eyes on a big blow-up slide that was there for the fans. After all, we’re talking about practice, man.

“The [slide] was adjacent to the tunnel,” Herrington says. “So the whole team was coming out of the locker room, toward the tunnel, through the court. The whole team ran right beside this thing. And he sort of eyed it and darted over and did a little floppity-flop or whatever over the edge of it, bounced around for a couple seconds and got down and joined the team. Other than the Bubba Chuck thing, that’s what I remember most of Allen Iverson in Memphis.”

Iverson finally made his Grizzlies debut in the fourth game of the season on Nov. 2 in Sacramento. He came off the bench, and recorded 11 points in 18 minutes of a 127-116 Grizzlies loss.

“Obviously he was not peak Allen Iverson, but certainly he had enough left in the tank,” Pranica says. “As a member of the Grizzlies franchise, you really wanted this to work. You wanted people to cling to him, to cheer for him, and you thought ‘Okay, maybe if this guy at the back end of his career is willing to say, '[I’m] willing to help Mike Conley get to next level. I’m gonna help this team get back to the playoffs.’ It really could have been a cool story.”

His post-game media session essentially squashed any hopes of that happening. Iverson launched into a rant, triggered by a reporter asking him about his hamstring.

"I had no problems with the hamstring,” Iverson said to reporters. “I had a problem with my butt sitting on that bench for so long."

Iverson kept insisting he should be starting; recalling past All-Star nods and his 2001 NBA MVP award.

“And he was asked where he should be starting and he said ‘Either [guard] position: The one or the two,” Fischer says. “And sitting right next to him to the left was Mike Conley and sitting right next to him on the right was O.J. Mayo. And they both looked at him like, ‘Seriously? We’re right here!’”

Iverson was to come off the bench or leave. Iverson chose to leave.

The next two games essentially resembled the first: Iverson coming off the bench and playing relatively well. He notched 18 points and seven assists in 28 minutes two nights later in Golden State and scored eight points in 21 minutes against the Lakers two nights after that.

Following the Lakers game, which turned out to be his final in a Grizzlies uniform, Iverson hit up the bar in his LA hotel and ran into Rob Fischer. Fischer, who says Iverson was decked out in head-to-toe white, had not the slightest inkling that The Answer had played his final game for Memphis.

“That next morning at our production meeting, one of the members of our broadcast team, Sean Tuohy, came over and said ‘A.I.’s gone,’” Fischer says. “[Backup center] Steven Hunter told him in the elevator, ‘He’s gone.’ And [Tuohy] said, ‘What do you mean he’s gone? He’s not here?’ And [Hunter] said, ‘No. He’s gone gone. And he ain’t coming back.’”

And that was it for Allen Iverson and the Grizzlies. Three games, three losses, and zero home games.

The official listed cause of his departure was for “personal reasons,” but reportedly Hollins gave Iverson an ultimatum—Iverson was to come off the bench or leave. Iverson chose to leave.

Image via Getty / Stephen Dunn / Staff

“I just was not expecting anybody to be leaving the team for ‘personal reasons’ like that,” says Kevin Lipe, who was a Grizzlies fan before he started covering the team for the Memphis Flyer in 2013. “I didn’t think you could even do that. I didn’t realize until later when I was talking to people and covering the team, it was ‘No. He got sent home.’”

Iverson may not have been with Memphis long, but he may have actually played a bigger role in the team’s recent triumphs than his three games would indicate. Hollins did not cave to Iverson’s demands to start, which earned him a lot of respect in the locker room, according to Pranica and other media members.

“I think the fact that Lionel stood up to him gave him a lot of credibility,” Pranica says. “And some people who have been around the organization will tell you this was one of the seminal moments in Lionel finding his voice as a head coach.”

The Grizzlies experienced a 16-win improvement that year from the previous season. The following year, they began their streak of six consecutive playoff appearances, and Hollins became the winningest coach in franchise history.

And the Iverson ordeal may have had a positive effect on Mike Conley too. At that time, Conley was a third-year player struggling to find his identity on bad Grizzlies teams.

It’s a little weird [having Iverson as the only grizzlies hall of famer]. It’s going to be even weirder when the second Grizzly is Vince Carter.

“I went over and talked to [Conley] immediately after the Iverson press conference," Herrington says. “He didn’t say anything, but he was clearly unhappy about the whole thing. He thought he was coming in to be starting point guard and all of a sudden this future Hall of Famer who plays his position is just plopped right on the team.”

Hollins correctly placed his trust; Conley has emerged as a star point guard and recently landed one of the largest contracts in NBA history when he signed a $153 million deal to stay in Memphis this summer.

“Lionel Hollins kept it from being a controversy,” Herrington says. “A lot of people in Memphis thought it was crazy that they didn’t start Iverson.”

Despite Iverson’s lack of direct contribution to the team, he will become the first ex-Grizzlies player in the Hall of Fame when he is enshrined later this week. Like the strange feeling of seeing Iverson in a Grizzlies uniform, to many around Memphis that news doesn’t feel right.

“It’s a little weird,” Herrington says. “It’s going to be even weirder when the second Grizzly is Vince Carter.”