... at Georgetown, [Iverson] often stayed after practice to play one-on-one against walk-on guard Dean Berry. Berry had known Iverson since the eighth grade, having played against him in AAU tournaments. Now, Iverson was clearly the better player, but one who, in Berry's estimation, got by on pure talent alone. He was so quick he never had develop moves in order to get to the basket. He could just get there, period. But that would not be the case forever; as the level of competition rose, so, too, did the challenge to invent ways to succeed.
Berry, with his limited skills, had spent years developing his game. A cerebral player, he started studying tapes in the seventh grade of great ball handlers. Over and over again, he'd watch Tim Hardaway's crossover dribble, commonly referred to as the "UTEP Two-Step." (Hardaway had gone to UTEP.) He watched Isiah Thomas's unique version of the same move. He saw John Stockton remove all the bells and whistles and confound opposing guards with it. ...
Berry adopted facets of every crossover he studied. ... The reason Iverson kept playing Berry after practice was that he couldn't stop Berry's crossover -- even when he knew it was coming. He'd tell himself not to go for the fake, and he knew he was quicker his teammate -- the twelfth man on the team! -- but then Berry would drop a cross on him and the next thing you knew, the walk-on was around him.
"Man," Iverson finally said, "you gotta show me that s---."
From then on, Berry taught his superstar teammate his favorite move.
From the book 'Only the Strong Survive', Larry Platt, 2002
DieArt
13 years ago