With no actual sports to speak of, we have to use every opportunity we can get to reminisce about the good old days when we could still go outside and whatnot. For instance, Thursday marked the 18th anniversary of Allen Iverson’s infamous practice rant, which prompted SportsCenter to do a whole Top 10 on the best sports rants in history.
Iverson’s volatile press conference takes the cake, and though it’s become something of a punchline over the years, it’s easy to forget the proper context for that moment, as it came on the heels of both a close friend’s murder and an ongoing fight with Larry Brown about Iverson’s future with the franchise.
Still, Iverson has shown he has a sense of humor about the whole thing over the years, at various points poking fun at himself and the whole situation. But he took that to a new height on Thursday when he used the opportunity to remind us all about why it’s important to keep a safe distance from one another as we all quarantine during the COVID-19 crisis.
We talkin about practicing social distancing!!! #StayHome #StaySafe pic.twitter.com/wJZjQU5I7V
— Allen Iverson (@alleniverson) May 8, 2020
The wording here might be a little fuzzy, given the context of the quote. Read one way, you could interpret it as mocking the idea of social distancing in the way he was mocking the notion of practice being a worthwhile topic of discussion. But the hashtags #StayHome and #StaySafe indicate otherwise.
So, you heard it here. Listen to Allen Iverson, stay safe out there, and if you go outside, make sure you keep at least six feet away from others.