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Even Allen Iverson is Pressuring Matt Cord into Doing Another Year as Sixers PA Announcer
By Matt Schultz
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A lot has changed since Matt Cord retired as Sixers PA announcer at the end of last season. LeBron James signed with the team. Jaylen Brown joined as well. The Sixers moved up to fourth-best odds to win the Finals. And amid the exciting developments, there’s still one burning question on Sixers fans’ minds that hasn’t been answered: Can we get Matt Cord back for this upcoming run?
He’s gotta come back, right? He’s gotta unretire. That retirement happened under false pretenses. He announced the retirement on March 11th. He didn’t know what was possible back then. None of us did. But now that we’re here, staring down the barrel of what could be the most exciting Sixers ever, there can be no doubt: We need the guy. We need Matt announcing the names all cool. No one says names cooler than Matt Cord, and now we got all these big new names. The people need to hear this before the actual games:
And now it sounds like Sixers fans aren’t the only ones who want Cord to come back – Tuesday morning on Preston and Steve, Matt Cord revealed that Allen Iverson texted him out of the blue telling him he has to come back for one more season:
CORD: “Saturday morning, I wake up and there’s a text from a number I don’t recognize. And it’s like, ‘Matt. Your book’s not complete. You got one more chapter. We need you, brother. AI.’ So I look up the area code and it’s Charlotte, and it’s where he lives. So I wait – this is six in the morning, I can’t text him back now. So I waited til like eleven, I texted that number back and I said, ‘Is this really Allen?’ He goes, ‘Yes. Who’d you think it was?’ And then we’re just texting back and forth.“
BILL COLARULO: “He has no choice now. You gotta come back.”
I agree. I don’t really see how Matt can get out of this one. Allen Iverson is texting you about it. He’s using wise phrases about how your life is a book and has chapters. That rules. You can’t say no after that. How could you say no to that? What could you even say? “Respectfully, Allen, I disagree. I think the chapters are pretty much all finished. There’s nothing in this book about LeBron, Jaylen Brown, the 2026-2027 season, anything like that. The book is going to go back on the shelf now.” Terrible response. It’d be embarrassing. If I’m Allen Iverson and I’m getting a text back like that from Matt Cord, I’m slapping a thumbs-down reaction on the text and immediately blocking Matt. Easy decision. And imagine how bad that would feel. Getting blocked by AI. It’s too painful to even think about…
For what it’s worth, I think Matt’s going to come back for one more year. There’s too much momentum now. Everyone’s clamoring for it. The AI text seals the deal. I know it’d seal the deal if I were him, anyway. If AI texts me after I retire telling me I have one more general LeBron riffing blog left in the tank, I’m writing that blog.
Iverson called you “brother” in a text, Matt… That’s sick… Don’t blow this…
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com