The Best Thing That Happened This Week: Allen Iverson Gets Paid!
That’s one former Philly athlete we don’t have to worry about, at least.
By Kevin Burkett – originally posted to Flickr as Allen Iverson and the Sixers, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link
Well, the Sixers opened their new season with a rather disheartening loss on Tuesday to the Celtics, by a final score of 105 to 87. Rumors that Markelle Fultz had remembered how to shoot proved unfounded as he went 2-for-7 for five points in 24 minutes of play. Joel Embiid tied the Celts’ Jayson Tatum for the game high with 23 points but also had five turnovers. He did, however, win the battle of the locker-room quotes when he was asked after the game about the two teams’ fabled rivalry and noted, “They always kick our asses. So this is not a rivalry.”
Sigh. All of which made us unreasonably happy on Monday to discover that right now, more than eight years after he last played an NBA game, former Sixer and NBA Rookie of the Year (22 seasons ago!) Allen Iverson is still getting paid by Reebok. And not chump change, either; he makes $800,000 a year and also has a $32 million trust fund he’ll be able to tap into when he turns 55, in 2030. It’s all thanks to a lifetime deal he sealed with the sneaker moguls back in 2001, when he was named the league’s MVP. Ah, we remember it well.
Considering that his life since then has been, um, somewhat checkered—what with the breakup of his marriage, the gambling and drinking rumors, the weird, abbreviated tour of Turkey and the cop confrontation, we were getting worried about the little dude, who’s got to be this city’s favorite Sixer of all time. Turns out he’s just fine, thank you kindly, and Reebok CEO Matt O’Toole says the money he’s still getting paid is worth it: “I’ll stand firmly that he has a big place in basketball and sports history.” Philly history, too.
