(AP)

The 76ers will hold a press conference Wednesday to officially announce the retirement of Allen Iverson.

Iverson spent parts of 12 seasons in a 14-season career with the Sixers. His legacy is not limited to those in Philadelphia, however. Earlier this week, Sixers coach Brett Brown commented on Iverson’s playing career:

Brown, on his best memory of Iverson:

“Philadelphia was my scout team for years and he was amongst the hardest people you had to scheme to guard because he could do it in so many ways. He is a great scorer, a great competitor. My most-vivid memory of him was when we were in the All-Star Game and I had the good fortune of coaching in (three) All-Star Games (in 2005, ’11 and ’13) with Pop and our staff. You go into a room and there’s 24 of the best players in the world in a small room and I actually had my son (Sam) with me, and I was thrilled to share that experience with him when he was very young. I look over and I see A.I. in a corner and I can’t believe physically, you know, he’s small. Small waist, but strong and cut. He’s small relative to the other great players. And I’m looking at him and to do what he did on a night-to-night basis and play with that toughness and get hit and get back up and have that fierceness in him with really a smaller type of body, he amazes me. That is one fierce competitor. For him to have the career he’s had in Philadelphia, I know the city is proud of him in what he’s accomplished. And having to guard him was a really, really hard assignment for the Spurs and scheming up with him was difficult if not impossible.”

Brown, on how to gameplan against Iverson:

“You had to guard him with a team. You had to put size on him with Bruce Bowen. Apples for apples, he could rise up quick and you couldn’t get to his shot. We opted to space him a little bit and put length on him with Bruce Bowen and show a real crowd around him where he wasn’t able to dance and rise up. You had to be there and crowd his space, take away his space, and maybe Timmy () or Fabricio (Oberto) or Rasho (Nesterovic) or long back in the day David (Robinson), with all of those bigger players there was a wall behind him. But I’ll tell you what – guarding him with anybody less than a full team, you had your hands full every night. He’s had big games against the Spurs and we were amongst the top defensive teams in the league. At times (against him), we couldn’t get it done.”

Duncan