12-25-2004, 10:10 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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Kwisatz Haderach
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Coatesville, PA
Age: 25
Posts: 24,132
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Sixers endured long and scary plane ride back from Indiana..
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PHILADELPHIA -- Even athletes aren’t immune to the trials and tribulations of travel. While NBA teams charter planes and otherwise avoid the hassles that sometimes affect the rest of us, the vagaries of Mother Nature make no distinctions as the 76ers found out late Wednesday night.
After rallying to beat the Indiana Pacers at Conseco Fieldhouse, the Sixers made their way through a steady snowfall to the airport, eager to get home.
Hours and one aborted takeoff later, they climbed back on their bus and headed back to their hotel.
"It was awful," Kyle Korver said. "Right up there with the worst ever. Our plane tried to take off and it was kind of slipping and sliding a little bit and the engines got real fast and then kind of cut down. I was like, ‘Let’s go tomorrow.’"
Eventually, that’s what happened. But before that, the plane went back to get de-iced again and have the engine looked at. Then they taxied out and the engine wouldn’t start.
That’s when the decision was made to head back to the hotel and try again Thursday.
The Sixers finally left Indianapolis around 2 p.m. and arrived in Philadelphia around 4:30, but not before they experienced even more weather problems, and some iffy moments.
"To put it in perspective, when we were landing we had just gone through unbelievable turbulence and you could see the city and it was bumper-to-bumper traffic," Sixers coach Jim O’Brien said. "It was the first time I wanted to be sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I was really looking forward to being in my car on the ground and going along at five miles per hour. It was not a pleasant journey home in any sense until we touched down."
Even after the Sixers took off, there was a problem. Allen Lumpkin, the team’s director of travel, said that right after leaving the ground there was a loud noise.
"What happened was something happened to the engine and they had to reboot it or something," Lumpkn said. "In the air."
That was enough to shake even the travel veterans like Corliss Williamson, who’s been in the league for 10 years.
"Any time you’re in a plane and you start taking off or you’re in the air and anything goes wrong you know that’s it," Williamson said. "Any loud noise or anything out of the ordinary is a bit scary."
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Wow. All I can say is, I'm glad they all made it back safely. I'm not a travel veteran, so I know if I went through something like that I'd probably have a streak running down my leg.
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Originally Posted by Henry Rollins
“The average is the borderline that keeps mere men in their place. Those who step over the line are heroes by the very act. Go.”
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Sixers endured long and scary plane ride back from Indiana..
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