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Jahmyr Gibbs and Amon-Ra St. Brown paid homage to Allen Iverson during a touchdown celebration.
Early in the second quarter of the Detroit Lions‘ road game Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts, Gibbs scored on a 1-yard touchdown run to take a 6-3 lead. Just after finding the end zone, Gibbs and St. Brown recreated Iverson’s iconic “step over” from the 2001 NBA Finals. Gibbs pretended to shake off his teammate before sinking an imaginary jump shot. Then St. Brown hit the ground, and Gibbs took a big, exaggerated step over him.
The inspiration behind this celebration took place on June 6, 2001 — about nine months before Gibbs was born.
It was Game 1 of the Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Iverson’s Philadelphia 76ers. Led by Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, the defending champion Lakers hadn’t lost a game in over two months. Iverson crossed up Tyronn Lue and then stepped over him after hitting the jumper. Iverson put up 48 points that night in the Sixers’ 107-101 win.
“I didn’t even know I did it. I was in the moment,” Iverson said a couple of decades later. “Just like everybody talks about the [Michael] Jordan crossover, I didn’t remember that. I was just playing.”
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Although that game did spoil the Lakers’ perfect postseason run, the rest of the series wasn’t close. Los Angeles went on to win the series, 4-1, for their second of what would become three consecutive NBA championship titles.
Still, the memory of the Iverson step over lives on.
Meanwhile, Gibbs and the Lions are working on making some history of their own by busting the club’s long history of losing seasons. At 9-1 heading into Sunday’s game, Detroit is the Super Bowl betting favorite for the first time.