Casino Spokesmen Deny Allen Iverson Was Ever Banned

On Monday night, Chris McCosky of the Detroit News reported on his blog that Allen Iverson had been banned from two of Detroit's three downtown casinos after repeated warnings for "boorish behavior" such as "throwing his chips or cards at the dealer" when he loses.

The only problem? As reported in today's Detroit Free Press, spokesmen for both MGM Grand Detroit and Greektown Casino denied that Iverson was ever banned, or that there's any record that he ever created a disturbance in the first place.

Unfortunately, millions of pixels have already been devoted to the apparently false report -- the blogosphere (including FanHouse) jumped on McCosky's version of events. After all, chaos seems to follow Iverson wherever he goes, and considering his name was already in the papers once this year for being rowdy while gambling in Minneapolis, it wasn't a difficult story to believe.

Despite what the spokesmen are saying, the truth, as always, is likely somewhere in the middle, though assuming there's not some type of coordinated cover-up among two competing casinos, McCosky obviously fell for a bad tip. And, as it happens, so did we.

On another note, it's amusing how the Detroit Free Press introduced their clarification: "The Internet was ablaze Tuesday with a rumor claiming that Allen Iverson recently had been banned from MGM and Greektown casinos."

No mention of McCosky, and no mention of the Detroit News -- just the nameless, faceless, capitalized "Internet," as if the rumor appeared out of nowhere and spread from computer to computer like the Conficker virus. Mainstream media doesn't make mistakes! Gossipy bloggers on MyFace and Tweeter do!