No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson

Documentary Feature, Spotlight Premieres
D: Steve James

James (Stevie, Hoop Dreams) goes back to his hometown of Hampton, Va., to revisit the 1993 bowling-alley brawl that came close to derailing, at age 17, the hoop dreams of NBA-star-to-be Allen Iverson and threw an inflammatory wrench into the town’s race relations. James, who played basketball himself while growing up in Hampton and whose late father was inducted into the Hampton Sports Hall of Fame and whose mother was the school nurse at the time the black high school was integrated, relished the opportunity to go home and try to make sense of the racial upheaval that landed his hometown on national news. So, did Iverson throw the chair that injured an innocent bowling-alley patron or not? We never learn the answer to that question. What we get is a signature Jamesian telling of what is in essence Hampton’s O.J. trial.

Friday, March 19, 2:45pm, G-Tech

This article appears in March 19 • 2010.

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