Once he arrives in Springfield, Mass., for Friday's Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Billy King will find Allen Iverson, embrace him, and pump his hand before pleading with him one more time: Please, Allen, turn your past into your future.
He will say what he said to Iverson the last time they were together, when King - once the 76ers' president and general manager, now working for the Brooklyn Nets - saw Iverson before a Sixers-Nets game at the Wells Fargo Center last season. He will encourage Iverson to start making speeches to schoolkids, to prisoners, to anyone who could find inspiration in the story of a small, spindly kid who went from jail to Georgetown to the Hall of Fame, who pounded the Staples Center floor with his foot over Tyronn Lue in the 2001 NBA Finals as if he were planting a flag atop the basketball world.