Patience

[peter delevett <pdelevett@amcity.com>]

There is a wonderful article in the current Sports Illustrated about Allen
Iverson. I was going to post excerpts of it here, but the gist is that after 2
years of everyone criticizing his game and saying he was too playground and
too selfish, Iverson has started making better decisions, taking better shots,
improving his game and getting his teammates involved. There's a great passage
where Larry Brown says he had to stop trying to force Iverson into a
preconceived role of the traditional point guard and start trying to build the
team and the position around Iverson's skills; sometimes, Brown said, that
means literally sitting on his hands during games and letting Iverson be
Iverson. It really made me think a lot about Antoine's being in a similar boat
and about how we, the press and the coaching staff all need to be patient,
give the kid a break and let his considerable talents bloom rather than trying
to hold him up to some standard of what he's not. Check it out.