Allen Iverson is among the greatest players to ever step onto a basketball court. But the headlines weren't always about AI's knee-twisting crossover or his explosive athleticism. Iverson was a born a non-conformist, and his refusal to follow The Rules or The Way Things Are Done always bothered certain people. He didn't dress how people wanted him to dress. He had tattoos and wore his hair in cornrows. He quite famously didn't deal in all the usual platitudes about hard work and "putting in the hours" in practice, even if that's exactly what he was doing when the cameras weren't watching.

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So that's why his comments about Michael Jordan last night were so striking. Iverson is making the rounds after his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, and he joined Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. Colbert played that famous clip of AI beating the GOAT with a diabolical crossover, and asked him what that moment—from his rookie year (!)—meant to him.

For all his idiosyncrasies, Iverson, like the rest of us, just wanted to Be Like Mike.

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It was about more than just a playing style. "If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have ever been a basketball player," Iverson said. "I would never have had the vision. I truly wanted to be like Mike."

If Jordan blazed the trail for Iverson, though, the '76ers legend did the same for those who came after him. As Colbert pointed out, he broke down many of the stigmas and taboos around personal expression in the NBA—and in the wider world of pro sports. Do today's players owe him something of a debt, Colbert asked, for being his "real, true self?"

"That's a very sweet thing for me," Iverson responded. "I was young, 21 years old. And I took the ass-whooping for these guys today to be able to be themselves. I wasn't afraid to be who I am. I didn't think anything was wrong with it. I dressed like the guys who I grew up with. I looked like the guys I grew up with."

But for all that, Iverson's legacy will be about basketball. He says even five- and six-year-old kids still come up to him and ask if he's "the guy who crossed up Michael Jordan." So let's watch him do it again:

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Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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