Introduction Tupac with a Jumpshot

Bubbachuck was looking like a damned Ethiopian bodybuilder. That's what he likes to call himself when he's shirtless, the bones of his wispy upper body jutting out at sharp angles. Allen Iverson without a shirt is a striking sight; he does not have the physical presence one would expect from a man who regularly challenges NBA behemoths under the boards and in the lane, men a foot taller and in some cases nearly twice as heavy. He's listed at six feet, 165 pounds, but on this May 2001 morning, in the bowels of his team's practice facility, he appeared willowy thin. A buck-fifty and maybe five-eleven, tops — somebody who could easily be mistaken for a rambunctious ballboy, rather than a man who was about to be named the National Basketball Association's Most Valuable Player.

On this day that would name him, in his words, "the best in the world at what I do," Iverson knew how the accolade would be spun in the media. He was having none of it. He knew it would be presented as his redemption, even though he saw it as just another moment of vindication, another in a series of "I told you so" moments.

That is why his thoughts were strictly on those whom he never felt the need to prove anything to: the crew from back home. Iverson was raised on the rough streets of Newport News, Virginia, a small Southern city with a strong migratory connection to New York City. On those streets throughout the 1980s and early '90s, he'd brashly tell whoever would listen that he'd one day star in the NBA or NFL. Older guys, guys with rap sheets and shady connections, would shake their heads and laugh, but they'd look out for him, too — because they saw a prodigy inthe making, someone they could help make it out.

Still bare-chested, Iverson eyed two outfits laid out before him. His business adviser, Que Gaskins, awaited his verdict. Gaskins had received a phone call the night before from Gary Moore, Iverson's personal assistant. Moore was the grade-school football coach who took in a twelve-year-old Bubbachuck — an amalgam of two uncles' nicknames — when things got crazy at home; Ann, Allen's single mother, all of fifteen years his senior, couldn't care for him. Now Moore couldn't make it back to Philly from Virginia in time for the press conference; could Que find Allen something to wear in front of the cameras?

"I just want him looking fresh and clean," Moore said.

"Well, we know he ain't wearing no suit," Gaskins said, prompting both men to laugh. Iverson's disdain for business suits was well known. "If he's going to go urban, it should be sophisticated urban."

So Gaskins laid out in front of Iverson a baby-blue velour Pelle Pelle sweatsuit and a black sleeveless Sean John ensemble. "These are phat," Iverson said, looking them over. "And I will wear them, but I ain't wearing 'em today."

Bending over and rummaging through his locker, Iverson extracted a black T-shirt recently given to him by one of his friends from back home. bad news hood check, the T-shirt boldly read in front; a list of street corners adorned the back — the toughest spots in Newport News, the very corners where Iverson came up. There was Sixteenth Street, where the troubled Ridley Circle housing projects were located, just blocks from the Stuart Gardens Apartments, where Allen lived for a time. There was Jefferson Avenue, where the hustlers hawked theirillicit wares a chest pass down from the Boys and Girls Club.

"I want all my niggas back home to see this," Iverson said, pulling the shirt on. If hip-hop culture is all about carving self-identity while maintaining your roots, then Iverson is all hip-hop culture; its defiance fuels his demeanor, both on court and off, and its music was the sound track of his turbulent upbringing, from the very first time he heard Kool Moe Dee and Biggie Smalls flow about their lives as though they'd been living his. Of the twenty-one tattoos that adorn his body, two pay homage to Newport News and four salute Cru Thik — his crew from back there, many of whom stay with him in Philadelphia during the basketball season.

When Iverson, wearing the Hood Check T-shirt, Timberlands, a scarf encircling his braided hair, and some $300,000 worth of ice dangling from his earlobes and around his neck, took the podium that day on May 15, 2001, it was much more than just another press conference to name a league's MVP. It was, in a sense, the end of an era, nothing short of a generational handoff. Suddenly gone were the days when a black athlete had to be deferential and nonthreatening in order to be loved. Iverson's team was winning and his name had just surpassed Anna Kournikova's as the most searched on the Internet, in or outside of sports. Of course, the talking heads would go on to paint a portrait of Iverson as a man who had undergone an epiphany. They'd give us a New and Improved Iverson: onetime bad boy morphed into heroic moral exemplar. But the press accounts said more about those who wrote them than about Iverson. The new conventional wisdom revealed a hunger to squeeze Iverson into a safe,familiar narrative. Which is a pastime made particularly hard by Iverson, because as well as he plays, he just refuses to play along.

For Iverson is neither hero nor villain, and he knew it that day. Instead, he is what the artwork burned into his skin shows him to be, a product of hip-hop culture never before seen in the "crossover"-oriented world of sports. The sound bites of his MVP press conference would focus on Iverson making nice with his old-school coach, Larry Brown, with whom he had feuded in the past — and would again in the not-so-distant future. But a widely ignored part of his remarks that day spoke to the singularity of the event. Iverson looked to the back of the room, squinting, until his eyes settled upon his beaming, high-fiving friends — his once much-derided "posse." They were dressed like him: baggy-jeaned, tattooed. These are the guys who took care of his mama and baby sister when he was in jail, the guys who kept a vigil for him on the other side of the prison's fence for five months, even though, not wanting to be seen in his county jumpsuit, he refused to make eye contact with them.

But on this day of his vindication, Iverson searched them out and his gaze never wavered. There was Ra, his eyes, as always, visibly red-rimmed. There was Eric Jackson or, as Iverson called him, "E." There was Marlon Moore and there was Andre "Arnie" Steele, who was busted in 1998 behind the wheel of Iverson's Benz CL 600 V-12 after allegedly taking part in a drug deal, and who was convicted in 1990 of cocaine possession with intent to distribute.

"What makes me proudest is that I did this my way," Iverson said, still looking straight at his boys, echoing the refrainlong crooned by a previous generation's entertainer who was seen by some to have similarly remained loyal to gangsta roots. "I never changed who I was."

Months later, Iverson came face-to-face with the dark side of his "keeping it real" ethic. How real, after all, is too real? On the eve of the 2001?002 season, five months after being named MVP, four months after winning over fans with his hustle and determination against the mighty Los Angeles Lakers in the 2001 NBA Finals, and just two months after marrying his high-school sweetheart, Tawanna Turner, the mother of his two children, Iverson learned that his best friend, Ra, had been murdered in Newport News. Shot eight times. Killed after arguing with a guy over who could rap better.

"I don't want to die in no projects, man, laying in the grass, people walking by, and be bleeding to death," a crushed Iverson whispered to his former bodyguard Terry Royster when he called to tell him the

Filled with exclusive interview material granted through unprecedented access to Allen Iverson, the iconic basketball superstar himself, "Crossover" provides an in-depth look at the truth behind this newly minted legend. Photos. 16-page color insert.

Part sports star, part antihero, part hip-hop icon, Allen Iverson has managed to cross over into the mainstream of American culture — without compromise. Defiantly tattooed, with his hair in cornrows, the six-foot Philadelphia 76ers point guard is one of the most recognizable and controversial stars of the sports world. His meteoric rise from a troubled childhood in the ghetto to NBA superstardom has been marked by five straight playoff appearances, including a finals berth in 2001 and an MVP award. From his rap sheet to his rap album, fans and journalists alike hound his every move. But never before has a biographer presented a full portrait of this complicated and intensely private star — a man whose loyalty to his family, the streets, and his friends trumps any other concern. Filled with exclusive interview material and unprecedented access to many of Iverson's inner circle, Only the Strong Survive is the first in-depth look at the truth behind this newly minted legend.

Larry Platt is the editor in chief of Philadelphia magazine and the author of Keepin' It Real: A Turbulent Season at the Crossroads with the NBA. His work has appeared in GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy, and Details. He lives in Philadelphia.