Allen Iverson’s wife filed for divorce the same day the Philadelphia 76ers announced that the All-Star guard would not return for the rest of the season.
Tawanna Iverson said their eight-year marriage is “irretrievably broken,” in papers filed on Tuesday in Fulton County Superior Court.
She asks for full custody of the couple’s five children, child support and alimony.
The youngest child is 17 months old and the oldest is 15.
After rejoining the 76ers as a free agent in December, Iverson returned to Atlanta last month to be with his family and deal with an undisclosed illness affecting his four-year-old daughter, Messiah.
The 34-year-old Iverson made a tearful return to Philadelphia eager to prove he wasn’t finished after disastrous stints in Detroit and Memphis. He played his first game back before a sold-out crowd dotted with No. 3 jerseys, but he only showed flashes of his former play-making ability.
He scored at least 20 points six times — including a 23-point effort in a game against the Lakers that turned into a throwback one-on-one duel with Kobe Bryant.
The former league MVP and four-time scoring champion averaged 13.8 points in 28 games this season. He started the season with Memphis but only played three games before announcing a short-lived retirement.
He has struggled to recapture his old magic; Iverson said at a Feb. 15 practice that it was emotionally draining to leave his family to play basketball.
Iverson was hobbled by an arthritic left knee and constantly needed it drained. He usually walked gingerly around the locker room after games. His dwindling production didn’t bother his fans — Iverson was voted a starter for the East All-Stars, though he did not play.
Coach Eddie Jordan said on Tuesday it was best for Iverson to focus on his family.
“I think it was the right thing to do at the right time,” Jordan said. “His body of work has proven to be a terrific body of work in the history of the NBA.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier