Can he last?

At 6-0, 160 pounds, Allen Iverson is a small but inviting target for enemies of the 76ers. With the playoffs approaching, Philadelphia is counting on him to withstand the beating he's about to take.

We might think of Ray Allen as a Renaissance man, all gallery openings and pricey Bordeauxs, but with less than two minutes gone in the Bucks' late-February visit to Philadelphia, the smooth wing guard gets medieval on 76ers guard Allen Iverson. Barely an hour after declaring, "I want to knock (Iverson) on his butt, so he knows not to come down here again," Allen brings the heat.

Iverson flashes toward the lane from the left wing, pulls up and tries a fallaway jumper over the much taller (by five inches) Allen-degree-of-difficulty be damned. If an ordinary player were attempting this shot, a hand in the face might do the defensive job. Iverson is a different case altogether, and Allen knows that. So he makes good on his pregame musings and drills Iverson, knocking him to the First Union Center deck. There is an ugly thud, a loud gasp from the crowd and the conspicuous absence of a referee's whistle. Get up. Play on.

"You've got to hit him hard one time, so he knows," Allen says.

He knows, all right. Iverson is going to get hit. Every night. Because the NBA's big guards and even bigger frontcourt players can't hope to keep pace with him in the open court, they need an equalizer. It comes from the occasional elbow, forearm, hip or cross-body block directed at the 6-0, 160-pound wisp of scoring smoke. Knock him down, the reasoning goes, and he might not take it inside again. Crack him upside the head, and there's a chance he'll shoot jumpers all night, instead of bursting toward the basket after that confounding crossover.

"If you don't hit him hard enough, then he'll come back and keep going to the free-throw line," Allen says.

Iverson takes the hits. And he gets back up. To shoot foul shots. To complete a 3-point play. To go inside again.