The Imperfect Answer

There may not have been a more turbulent path to sports superstardom than the one Allen Iverson traveled. It was a path that eventually landed him as not just a basketball legend, but also what many would consider a global cultural icon. So, while I'm no biographer, and this is not the place to recount the entire story, I think it's safe to characterize the journey as "Imperfect".

Imperfect like the man himself - like all of us really....just human. Imperfect at times but then also capable of doing incredible things that, from afar, we might view as perfection...unfairly creating an expectation that this human will then be perfect in all things they do...at all times.
That's not reality though, and along the way the idea of being "real" became synonymous with Allen Iverson. He displayed that imperfection of reality in everything he did, said, wore...and it endeared him to millions. This was not the corporate created, PR trained, polished "product" we'd mostly been presented with over the years - this was something much more relatable, much more human...while at the same time performing incredible feats on the court which looked anything but human. He truly was "The Answer"

This picture itself also carriers with it imperfections. It was done in 2001, traveling its own rocky 24-year path to make it out into the world. Like AI it's been bumped, bruised, damaged in various ways. It was completed many years ago, with the limited tools available to me at the time. You can see marks of mistakes that could not be erased no matter how hard I tried. To be honest I didn't want to even put it out given all of its flaws...but then I thought about it. I realized that there could not be a more perfect subject than Allen Iverson to take such an imperfect picture and make it somehow...I don't know...perfect