Sideline Chatter
Next trip, he should probably take a cab

By Dwight Perry
The Seattle Times

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Forget about three seconds in the key. Allen Iverson just got whistled for seven days in the handicapped spot.

The 76ers' star guard left his Rolls-Royce improperly parked at a Philadelphia airport parking garage for a week in late May, earning him four citations for more than $300 each, The Associated Press reported.

According to the Philadelphia Daily News, Iverson has been issued 65 parking tickets totaling $4,500 since 2001.

Those figures, of course, are subject to change — just as soon as port officials discover where Iverson stashed his car while he's away at the Olympics.

Testing positive for 24-3-12

World Anti-Doping Agency officials aren't saying where they dispose of all those positive test samples, but the lawns at WADA headquarters, we hear, have to be mowed three times each day.

The bus stops here

Ian O'Connor of the Westchester (N.Y.) Journal News just arrived in Greece, but he's already convinced that Athens bus drivers are better than those during the 1996 Olympics.

Well, sort of.
 
"The Atlanta bus drivers didn't know where they were going," O'Connor wrote. "The Greek bus drivers know where they're going — but only know the third-fastest way to get there."

Vegas or bust

Sean Johnson, a former prep all-stater who spent the past two years on a Mormon mission, is among the punting candidates on the Virginia football team.

"Fortunately, he didn't do his mission in China or Switzerland — he did it in Las Vegas," Cavaliers coach Al Groh told the Newport News Daily Press. "There's probably a lot of sinners out there to convert, but there's also a lot of flat land for a punter to kick a ball."

Well, that's certainly one way to make yourself into a blue-chipper.

The Bronx Boo

Boston pitcher Curt Schilling is new to most of the American League this season, but he was already too familiar with Yankees fans, courtesy of Arizona's victory over the Steinbrenners in the 2001 World Series.

"The Yankee fans, they are angry, bitter, loud, obnoxious, rude, vulgar, incredibly passionate people," Schilling told HBO. "If they boo you as a visiting player, that just means you don't suck."

The write stuff

• King Kaufman of salon.com, on the 535-foot homer hit by Reds slugger Adam Dunn that left Cincinnati's Great American Ballpark and bounded into the Ohio River — which is technically in Kentucky: "You know you've really given up a home run when there are only 48 states it hasn't traveled through."

• Ex-UW football star Mark Stewart, to the Birmingham (Ala.) News, on how he knew U.S. Olympian Aretha Hill was destined to be a discus thrower 14 years ago, when he first saw her in his freshman PE class at Renton High School: "She could throw a football farther than anyone else, and I knew she wouldn't be a quarterback."

At his Bratwurst

BadJocks.com, citing the Drudge Report, says that John McEnroe's new CNBC talk show is such a bust that it flatlined — a 0.0 rating — for 19 of its first 25 telecasts.

McEnroe spin-meisters, disputing four of those zeroes, insist he's down no worse than love-15.

Dwight Perry: 206-464-8250 or dperry@seattletimes.com