Review Rewind - No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson
It’s still there. The neon carpet has been replaced many times over and most of the faces have since changed, but it’s still there. Two decades have passed and hundreds of millions of dollars have washed in and out of this story, but it’s still there. Growing up, Sparetimes was my second home and no matter how much changed, the story of Valentine’s Day in 1993 and the bowling alley brawl that landed Allen Iverson in jail, never quite faded.
Places like Hampton, Virginia don’t often forget things because they have made it a point to remember. Every stitch of the area is immersed in history—much of it racial, given that it was the site where the first enslaved people landed on the shores of America. Fast-forward a few centuries and many feel as though not much has changed. Income inequality fits neatly between racial lines; Black and White people share space with a certain unease that everyone dares not mention; and every day feels more or less like those that came before it. But when something happens that upsets that delicate balance, unrest can be certain and swift. When Steve James set out to capture all of this in No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson, he did so with a surface level-understanding of all of these things. Hampton, Virginia is, after all, his hometown. But through personal interviews and first-hand accounts, he plumbs the depths of the story in a way that captures the essence of so many of our national conversations—that this is a divided country.
Allen Iverson was one of the top high school basketball players in the country in 1993, still struggling to overcome a challenging upbringing. In the film, Iverson says, “they say nobody makes it from Newport News, Virginia” and it was clear to all that he was on the brink of breaking that trend. So when Iverson and three others were arrested following an altercation at Sparetimes on February 14, 1993, many viewed it as a major disappointment. Iverson was alleged to have thrown a chair in the fight, for which he was sentenced to 15 years (with 10 suspended). The harsh sentence sent shockwaves through the community, with White people thinking it would help him get his life together and Black people making him a martyr along the lines of Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King, Jr. Neither was right.
Because the fight itself broke down along racial lines, so too did the fight about the fight. Conspiracy theories supporting this position or that one came from all sides. Theories ranged from a master-plan to take out Iverson because he attended the Mayor’s alma mater’s archrival, to the judge’s daughter being present at the fight (she wasn’t). Both sides magnified and distorted wrinkles in the story to fit their narrative. As one of the interviewees in the film states, “when tensions get that high, the truth becomes a casualty.”
As the story grew, national media began to focus on it, with the crescendo coming as Tom Brokaw interviewed Iverson and the story made the cover of Sports Illustrated. With pressure mounting, the first Black Governor of Virginia, Douglas Wilder, granted Iverson clemency, which closed one chapter of this story, but didn’t finish it. Much like many of the best stories, this one is not really about its subject; it is about all of us.
When James interviews his own mother, who says “now I understand why they don’t like us,” as she talks about her experience integrating an all-Black school as the first nurse they ever had, she reveals the chasm that traditionally exists in this country. With different experiences come different realities, and with different realities come different interpretations of the same events. That’s why White people could view that grainy footage from the bowling alley that night and think “thug,” and why Black people looked at the exact same footage and thought to defend. The narratives clung to by each group were borne out of their own experiences with race. Once those narratives form, they reverberate in ways that feed the narratives of tomorrow. Like slavery, lynching and police brutality, each perceived inequity in the criminal justice system becomes another brick in the wall that divides us. And when White institutions like the local newspaper, the Daily Press, scrutinize the legitimacy of the claims, heels just dig in further.
People still feel raw about these moments. Almost 25 years later, many of Hampton’s White residents have a certain special disdain for Iverson. The kind of disdain that often manifests only in pockets, but never really goes away. It is what often happens when a local grievance becomes an avatar for a broader set of gripes. People allow frustrations to fester without ever really having an effective outlet or an effective means of communicating with those they might like to. Race relations, at least in this country, will likely forever be difficult. The aftermath of this episode shows us why. People retreat to the narratives of their “side” and nothing approximating a conversation ever happens. At no point does it ever seem we get any closer to having the dialogue most would acknowledge we need.
Whether it is Allen Iverson in 1993 or Charlottesville in 2017, when one surveys the landscape for evidence of this country’s racial strife, you usually don’t have to look far beyond the headline of the day. It’s still there.
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