Tuesday, November 29th, 2011 at 6:07 pm  |  10 responses

Turkey’s Besiktas Retires Deron Williams’ Jersey

With the NBA lockout seemingly in the rear-view mirror, it’s time for all those NBA players that left to play ball overseas to return to their respective NBA cities. Well, all except for JR Smith, Wilson Chandler Kenyon Martin and Aaron Brooks, apparently. One guy who will be making his way back home with more than just some extra cash is New Jersey Nets’ Deron Williams. The All-Star guard will also be bringing his now retired Turkish jersey. Yes, that’s right. All it took were 15 games for Williams to have his jersey retired. From USA Today: “Clearly, the bar for basketball greatness isn’t set too high in Turkey. The farwell party today for Deron Williams proved that today, as his Besiktas team retired his No. 8 jersey after 15 games. Seriously, 15 games. Deadspin says Williams was good for averages of 21.8 points and 6.5 assists during his stay in Istanbul, which has come to an end with the NBA lockout settled. Give the New Jersey Nets’ guard credit for realizing there wouldn’t be a quick fix for the lockout, and signing on to play in Turkey way back in July. He blogged about the experience for ESPN.com, and wrote that there wasn’t much culture shock, and that nearly everyone on the team and coaching staff spoke English. But just think. If the lockout had lasted another month or so, he probably would have been headed to Turkey’s Hall of Fame.”


  • Add a Comment
  • Share
  • RSS

Tags: , , ,

  • Cheshire Posted: Nov.29 at 6:17 pm
    drop 50 and hall of fame status!

  • Edoardo Tamalio Posted: Nov.29 at 6:30 pm
    it’s good to see how a superathlete accept to embrace other culture…’Sup DeJuan Summers??

  • @Deknowz Posted: Nov.29 at 8:33 pm
    LIKE A BOSS!

  • Johhny Blaze Posted: Nov.29 at 9:11 pm
    Hahahaha! What he (^) said…

  • Darksaber Posted: Nov.29 at 10:23 pm
    Yet another nail in Allen Iverson’s mentality coffin. He was with Besiktas last season.
    Deron Williams won the turkish fans over by playing hard and delivering wins. Also like that he seems to have been interested enough in his surroundings to blog about his time there.
    Good man, embracing change.

  • OTB Posted: Nov.30 at 2:39 am
    Deron Williams is a good man.

  • datkid Posted: Nov.30 at 3:21 am
    cosign darksaber

  • Scuderia1905 Posted: Nov.30 at 5:22 am
    i think retiring D-will s jersey was wrong . ( i am from turkey so i have to explain :) ) Retired Jersey is not a big deal here . i think Derons jersey was the first jersey which any Turkish Basketball team ever retired.I thin Besiktas wanted to give a goodbye present to deron because retiring a jersey is great honour in US . it was great to have a Allstar Nba Player in Turkey and i have to say Deron played like 10000 times better than Iverson (Iverson had more reputation than Deron in Turkey )
    he played with 100 percent (respect ! ) Turkish league is not as tough as NBA so he could do a good job with his 60 percent but he fought till the last minute .Lock out is over and I am Galatasaray fan so i am glad that we are not gonna play against D – will :) ) and i can finaly watch the Turkish players in NBA ( watch Enes Kanter(utah) i think he will be a great player) and i am also glad that lock out ended befor Lamar odom came to Besiktas … i dont have a problem with the guy but Turkey cant handle a Kardashian :) ))

  • Overtime Posted: Nov.30 at 8:04 am
    Smart move by Williams, wanted to play some proper, organised ball, so he did. End of

  • Niio Posted: Nov.30 at 2:53 pm
    I would like to inducted to the Turkey hall of fame on black friday :)

Comments




The comments section is a place to further discuss the topics in this post. Commenters who seek to accomplish any of the following may be banned: - Personally attack other commenters. - Make derogatory comments regarding race, ethnicity, language, gender, sexual orientation or religion. - Troll, or comment with the intention of creating problems. Trolling includes, but isn't limited to, baiting people to flame at you, encouraging people to leave the site, spamming and using alternate IDs.