NBA ALL-STAR WEEKEND

February 11, 2001

Larry Brown

Allen Iverson

LARRY BROWN: I'll just make this real brief. I'm just proud I'm part of this league. I thought the game was a really great game for the League under the circumstances, this whole week, I've heard so much negative stuff about the direction of the League and all of these young players. I thought both teams tried to win and tried to play the right way, and it was a terrific thing to be part of that.

ALLEN IVERSON: I'm one of them but I think there's just so much other great talent in this league. You know, it is not easy to win a war like this when you have so many great players on the court at one time. It's special and it's a tribute to my coach and my teammates, especially my teammates, because without them, I would not be here. My family, my friends, everybody that's just been with me through my struggles and pain knows it is a tribute, and I think that it is going to be beautiful for years to come, because, you know every year it seems like we get somebody else with a different kind of God-given ability to add to this league.

LARRY BROWN: I haven't played in this game.

LARRY BROWN: I watched some old clips of some All-Star Games with Pettit and Cousy and Elgin and Bill Russell, people like that were in, and I just thought, wow, those teams are trying to win, and I sensed from the beginning of the weekend that this was going to be kind of a fun game, because I felt our players wanted to prove something. Like I said before, there's been so much said about our young players not living up to the standards of the other players in the past, and I've been with two Dream Teams the last two summers, and we've got a lot of great young players that are not only good kids but great guys. The beginning of the game I thought both teams tried to play the right way and tried to win. I had no idea we could come from behind, but in the time-outs, they remained positive and they wanted to do everything they could to make the game competitive. So, it was a wonderful ending for us.

ALLEN IVERSON: We wanted to win. I mean, from the beginning when we first threw the ball up because we knew everybody was saying we could not win, because of our size, but it is not about the size on paper. It's about the size of your heart. You know, coming into the fourth quarter I think it was like 8:55 left, and I think myself, Stackhouse and Vince and a couple of the other guys, Dikembe, we were all sitting on the side and we kept saying, why not us? Why can't we be the ones to come back from a 19-point deficit in an All-Star Game. And I asked them and we said "Why not?" They just -- they just kept on playing, playing hard, and we turned it on in the fourth quarter and we hit some shots and then we started to feed off the crowd, the momentum was there for us, and we were able to do it.

ALLEN IVERSON: They kept saying -- one of the guys said that he thought that we would do good by just having, you know, just letting them win by a 10-point lead, and I kept telling them, "bet everything you've got on this game right here," and, you know, I thought we was going to win it. And I kept joking with them, telling them to bet should go. They thought we were not going to win and none of them wanted to bet. So obviously they knew something that God new.

ALLEN IVERSON: It was a dramatic change, because you have different players playing now. We're never going to be able to replace Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, guys like Larry Bird, we're not going to be able to replace those guys. You're asking too much to try to replace something like that. They brought everything to the game. They made it you know -- they made us able -- to be able to come with our own identity and our own image and try to be ourselves. We're not going to be able to put our feet this those shoes. It is just going to take a collective effort from everybody to try to put their foot in those shoes and try to make this league what it is, and it is a great league.

LARRY BROWN: Well, I drove down on the train with Stephon, and we were just talking about a long time ago, Allen and Stephon, you know, played together and I was hopeful that we would have the same opportunity. Their bodies were the same at that time, also by the way. But, you know, I just thought, hey, this is the perfect time and place, and, you know, I'm proud of them all. We had every reason to make this like an All-Star Game and just lay down and stop playing, and it didn't happen. The nicest thing for me, personally, as a coach, I love basketball. It's been phenomenal for me, and I've always felt that whether these guys know it or not, kids watch them and want to be like them, and today was the greatest thing for basketball. There was so many lessons to be learned, you know, from him (Iverson) in what he's accomplished, all of the things he's been through, watching Dikembe, having two teams, you know, play as hard as they could in this kind of atmosphere and have one team come from 19 down, it helps coaches everywhere, and it helps our games and that is what makes me excited.

LARRY BROWN: Well, we got off to such bad starts in the first and third quarter, but I just looked at them. They were really positive on the bench. Alonzo was cheering louder than anybody. I just got a feeling if we could just get back in the game a little bit, something crazy could happen. We got down to 13 and missed a couple open looks and then all of the sudden we just started to defend and Dikembe was guarding everybody. We got some energy, and I just said, who the heck knows. I've seen this kid and a lot of these other kids do great things, and fortunately for us, we put it into about an eight or nine-minute period.