Allen Iverson sent VJ Edgecombe a message before Philadelphia hosted Boston in Game 3, telling the rookie guard that playoff basketball feels nothing like the regular season. Iverson said the crowd, the adrenaline and the emotion of the postseason hit differently once the games matter most, and he urged Edgecombe to remember that when the pressure rises.
“You wait to the playoff when your adrenaline going,” Iverson told Edgecombe. He added that “the higher you get, higher you get, but it’s just the adrenaline, and then eventually during the game you can feel yourself coming into your own and calming down.” He also told him, “It’s like every time you let it go, you can hear bang,” and said, “We got the best fans ever, man.”
The message landed after Edgecombe’s breakout in Game 2 in Boston, when he scored 30 points and grabbed 10 rebounds as the 76ers beat the Celtics 111-97 to tie the series at 1-1. The performance made Edgecombe the youngest player in NBA history to record a 30-point, 10-rebound playoff game, a line that fits the kind of stage Iverson knows well.
Iverson is one of the defining players in 76ers history, and his career still carries weight in Philadelphia. NBA.com lists him with averages of 26.7 points, 3.7 rebounds and 6.2 assists, and the Hall of Fame credits him as the No. 1 pick in the 1996 NBA draft, an 11-time All-Star, seven-time All-NBA selection, four-time scoring champion and the 2001 MVP. He was inducted in 2016.
That history matters because Edgecombe is a rookie guard in his first postseason, and Philadelphia’s playoff atmosphere has become part of the standard Iverson helped set. Iverson told him, “You watch, watch when we get to the playoffs. It’s going to be totally different. Remember what I tell you?” For Edgecombe, the next test is not the box score he already posted in Boston, but whether he can keep carrying it into the noise of Philadelphia.
