Allen Iverson

Born and raised in Virginia in the 1970s and '80s, Allen Iverson grew up the son of a single teen mom. When he reached high school, he excelled at sports, notching High School Player of the Year awards in both football and basketball. However, near the end of Iverson's high school tenure, things took a turn for the worse. He got involved in an incident at a local bowling alley where he allegedly assaulted a woman and, despite being only 17, he was tried as an adult and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. However, circumstantial evidence led to him being granted clemency after only four months. After those events, Iverson finished high school and received a full scholarship to Georgetown University, where he excelled for two seasons, setting the school record for career scoring average. He left for the NBA in 1996, where he was selected first overall by the Philadelphia 76ers. While the Sixers weren't great when he arrived, Iverson excelled, earning Rookie of the Year in his first season. In short order, the Sixers were a perennial playoff team with Iverson at the helm, making it to the NBA FInals in 2001, where they lost to the dominant Los Angeles Lakers. Iverson also won his only MVP award that season as well. Over the next several years, the Sixers never made it back to the finals and Iverson's relationship with the team grew contentious as he regularly argued with coaches and management. In late 2006, he was traded to the Denver Nuggets, where he spent two seasons before bouncing around the Detroit Pistons and Memphis Grizzlies throughout 2008 and 2009. Iverson returned to the Sixers to close out his NBA career in 2010. He wasn't done with professional basketball, though, as he spent a season playing in Turkey before eventually announcing his retirement in 2013. In November of that year, his number was retired by the Sixers, and in 2016, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.