Allen Iverson: Paid $154 Million to Play a Kid's Game--Is Broke at Age 36

image: "Damn...I'm broke, dawg!"

You'll recall that a few weeks ago I posted a story about former NFL Wide Receiver Terrell Owens, who managed to blow the cool $70 million he made as a football player and is destitute at the age of 38. Well, former NBA player Allen Iverson, who is no stranger to attention-whoring himself, has now stepped forward and more than doubled down on Owens's stupidity. Here is Yahoo Sports with the details:

Allen Iverson has reportedly gone from 11-time NBA all-star to financial deadbeat. The Philadelphia 76ers icon was recently ordered to pay over $860,000 to a jeweler, and he couldn't cut a check.

A Georgia judge has ordered the seizing of Iverson's bank account, so the relatively little money he has left will be garnished, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This isn't just another formerly famous athlete blowing a ton of cash. Iverson was among the biggest superstars in the NBA, earning more than $154 million during a professional career that began back in 1996. (This doesn't include endorsement money and other business deals.)

How did Iverson lose so much?

Loyal to his friends from a youth spent in Virginia, Iverson traveled with one of the biggest posses in professional sports. Bill Lyon of the Philadelphia Inquirer says the group has as many as 50 people for some Sixers home games. "A.I." took a hair stylist on the road with him and also loved to buy jewelry for himself and his beloved mother, Ann Iverson.

I realize that professional athletes blowing their earnings and ending up destitute is not exactly a new or original story. What's appalling, however, is the sheer amount of money that Owens and Iverson managed to squander before they even reached the age of 40. Throw in the millions they no doubt earned on their endorsement deals and these two idiots managed to blow through more than a quarter of a billion dollars between them. I mean, you really have to TRY to go through that much loot so quickly and have nothing left to show for it.

Once again, it is well past time that we as a society stopped looking up to morons like Terrell Owens and Allen Iverson as heroes. They are not. Like supermodels, they are people who were born with immense genetic gifts who otherwise are no damn different than you or me. That the media continues to place their ilk on a pedestal and we throw tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars at them just to play a kid's game is all you need to know about what a decadent and depraved society we have become.


Bonus "The morons they are winning"...at least until they retire and go broke