Nearly a month after his last game with Beşiktaş Cola Turka, BallinEurope still misses Allen Iverson. A.I. was just coming into form with the Turkish club when a rumor-enflaming leg injury took him out of action and back to America for treatment. Surgery will be performed on Tuesday to remove an “undetermined growth in his right calf,” and Iverson expects to return to Turkey soon thereafter, though it may be up to six weeks before Mr. Answer is back on the court with the Eagles.
Though the longtime Philadelphia 76er has suffered numerous injuries throughout his time in pro hoops (Understatement check: Has Iverson ever played a game at 100% injury-free?), the leg injury was assumed to be a career-killer for the 35-year-old by many, beginning with open speculation and quotage in Turkish media that virally spread online.
Today, however, Iverson’s manager Gary Moore stated that his client “wants to play several more years.”
Meanwhile, back in Turkey, Beşiktaş sits in a middling seventh-place in the TBL standings at 9-6. The Eagles have won both their games without Iverson, winning at Erdemir (currently 5-11) and vs. Mersin (3-13); today, they’ll host Türk Telecom at 2pm CET (8am EST).
Boomeranging back across the pond, fans of the seemingly cursed Cleveland Cavaliers are clutching at serious straws while on a mind-blowing 1-26 “run” that’s left them oh-for-2011 thus far. (And you thought the 2009-10 Minnesota Timberwolves were bad.)
In today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer, basketball writer Mary Schmitt Boyer responds to a reader who speculates that the Cavs might get Iverson “on loan from the Turkish team. I hear they’re in dire financial straits anyway. He’s a take-charge kind of point guard, which Cavs sorely lack. … Sure the man is a train wreck, but this is his shot at redemption. Sure they get smaller, but might as well make it a circus because the wheels already have fallen off. At least it will be entertaining, probably win a few and get the confidence back.”
Ms. Boyer charitably ignores speculation about “dire financial straits” (Wasn’t Beşiktaş GM Şeref Yalçın bragging in December about having the Euros to pay Shaquille O’Neal in 2011-12?), the difficulty of literal transfers between the U.S. and The Continent, and slagging of Mr. Answer as “a train wreck” by answering with “Three words: Never gonna happen. But I did get a good laugh out of your e-mail.”
Phew. Glad that’s been put to rest then. Awaiting your return to Europe, A.I.!
