The picture that I drew for my fifth project refers to Allen Iverson in his infamous rant about practice. This rant is the one of the major symbols that shows the dynamics of Allen Iverson’s struggle with the media. It took place after the 2002 Season, a disappointment of a season compared to the finals run the year before. There were problems between Iverson and the head coach of the 76ers, Larry Brown. They had a meeting in which they decided that they would stay together for the upcoming year. Iverson had agreed to have a press conference with the team’s reporters and some others. Brown had decided to tell one of the reporters that Iverson had shown up to the meeting a little bit drunk, to which Iverson swore was not the truth. Because of this, the reporters decided to attack Iverson about his dedication to practice, which sparked the rant from Iverson. Iverson was misunderstood his whole career by the media and by the league. He was portrayed as something he was not. This rant is often misunderstood as Iverson saying that practice isn’t important. What Iverson is trying to say is that he called the press conference to talk about the season and his future with the team and Coach Brown. He tells them that he couldn’t be there for those practices because of a tragedy in his family; his best friend growing up who he had considered like a brother had passed away. He also had shared his frustrations with how the media conveniently mixes up worst to change narratives. He says that one of the coaches told a member of the media that Iverson had missed a practice and they changed it to Iverson misses practice, leading people to think it is a recurrent problem. Throughout Iverson’s career, the media always misunderstood him and tried to make tried to make him out as a bad guy. They are part of the reason that the league treated Iverson the way that it did. The media tried to make it seem like Iverson was in a gang, making the league feel like it’s image was being threatened because of how Iverson was influencing the NBA and introducing Hip-Hop culture. The league didn’t want it to seem like it was welcoming gang culture with open arms, so they pushed back against his style and influence. These together gave Iverson a bad name, which really wasn’t fair.