Sixers legend Allen Iverson expresses being hurt not being on Redeem Team
Philadelphia 76ers legend Allen Iverson is one of the best players the league has ever seen. Standing at just 6 feet tall, Iverson took on all of the giants in the game and he had himself one amazing career which has led him to the Hall of Fame.
One of Iverson’s very few failures in basketball was the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The Answer was on a team full of some of the best players in the NBA has to offer, but they couldn’t mesh at all and they came up short in the games. They only won a Bronze medal which led to a complete overhaul of the men’s national basketball team.
Team USA returned in the 2008 games led by LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, and others and they avenged their 2004 failures by winning the gold medal in 2008. The biggest name not on the team, of course, was Iverson.
Iverson hopped on “Cold as Balls” with comedian Kevin Hart and he expressed how hurt he was that he wasn’t on the Redeem Team of 2008:
Obviously, you think you put together a bunch of pros and we supposed to beat any team you put out there on the floor, but that wasn’t the case, obviously. That summer, everything started happening overseas. So me and Tim Duncan were the only ones that agree to go. I wanted to go, but I wasn’t invited and then they put together, obviously, the team that ended up winning.
It was out of my control, you know what I mean? I definitely didn’t want to make a big deal about it out of respect for the guys that they did choose. Those were my guys, you know what I mean? I rooted for rooted for them till the end, but deep down it bothered me. It hurt.
Despite not winning the gold medal in the Olympics, it doesn’t change the fact that Iverson built up one helluva career. The gold medal would have just been another accomplishment to add to his already impressive resume.
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