If you like watching fun basketball games, you probably liked watching (or like–thanks, YouTube) Allen Iverson ball. Dude was built like an elf and shot too many bad jumpers, but as a creative, articulate, borderline-psychotic volume scorer, as a player whose neurotic self-enclosed style ended up shortening his career in the NBA, he’s a Romantic hero. Cf. Kobe Bryant. Unlike Kobe he’s an acrobatic poet; he’ll break your heart.

Unfortunately his personal life sounds like something Percy Shelley or John Berryman would get up to. Highly recommended–the article, not the life.