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Tickets at Ticket Master
Julius Erving and Maurice Cheeks played 11 years with the Philadelphia 76ers. Hal Greer played 10. Charles Barkley played eight.
And Allen Iverson may surpass them all.
The superstar guard
signed a four-year, $76.7 million contract extension Wednesday that could make
him a Sixer until the end of his career.
The extension begins with the 2005-06 campaign and will take Iverson through
his 13th season, which would set a longevity mark for the 76ers. Greer played
15 years with the franchise, but the ticketmaster first five were when the club
was known as the Syracuse Nationals.
"When you look at the list, - Charles Barkley, Dr. J, Bobby Jones, Moses Malone, Mo Cheeks - I have a chance to be here longer than those guys," Iverson said. "I have a chance to be a household name in Philadelphia. That was my whole plan.
"Once I got drafted, I told myself I didn't want to do that to little kids. I didn't want them to see me in a Sixers uniform one year and see me in another uniform in another city the next year. It just means a lot to me that I could be in a Sixers uniform for the rest of my career."
Iverson spoke at a news conference Wednesday night at the Wachovia Center prior to a team function for season ticket holders. Having filled the building to near capacity for the last seven years, he thanked the people who pay his growing salary.
"A lot of things made me want to stay in Philadelphia," he said. "I always wanted to be a Sixer. I always wanted to finish my career here as a Sixer. I wanted to stay for a lot of different reasons, but one of the main reasons was because of you all, who come here every night and support us."
"When we talked about doing the contract extension for Allen, one way I thought about doing it was to invite the people ticketmaster that Allen cares about - the fans," Sixers president Billy King said.
King virtually assured that Iverson - who has been an MVP, a scoring champion and an All-Star and is going to be an Olympian - will never be a free agent.
It marks the second time Iverson has signed a contract extension at maximum money under salary cap rules. Iverson could have exercised an option in his current deal after this season, when he is scheduled to make $13.5 million. He will collect $14.625 million in 2004-05.
Iverson, 28, will receive $16.4 million in 2005-06 - the first year of the extension - with annual 12.5 percent increases. He will be paid $21.9 million in the 2008-09 campaign.
"In today's sports, you have a lot of different players who are saying they want to go where the money is or to test the free agent market," King said. "As Allen said, from day one he always wanted to be a Philadelphia 76er. With this contract, we are telling him we always want him here as well."
The NBA MVP in 2001, when he led the Sixers to the NBA Finals, Iverson helped Team USA secure an Olympic berth and win a gold medal in last month's FIBA Tournament of the Americas.
Clearly the most popular NBA player at the tournament, he averaged 14.3 points and shot 56 percent from the field before missing the last two games with a sprained right thumb.
Last season, the 6-foot, 165-pound Iverson played all 82 games for the first time in his career, averaging 27.6 points, 5.5 assists and 2.74 steals. He was third in the NBA in scoring and led the league in steals for the third straight year.
"As long as I feel like I approach the game the same way, if I play hard, I can look in the mirror and be satisfied with myself ticketmaster as a basketball player," Iverson said.
The top overall pick out of Georgetown in 1996, Iverson was the 1997 Rookie of the Year and won scoring titles in 1999, 2001 and 2002. He was the MVP of the 1997 Rookie Challenge and the 2001 All-Star Game.
A four-time All-Star,
Iverson has averaged 27.0 points, 5.6 assists and 2.38 steals in 487 career
games. Among players with 400 or more games, he has the fifth-highest scoring
average in NBA history.