A few days ago, Jordi, who blogs at The Serious Tip, e-mailed me a fairly innocent link to a little item about former NBA player Sam Perkins visiting Kyrgyzstan.

Now there is dreadful news, of a 737 having crashed after leaving Kyrgystan, killing many onboard.

The reporting of the crash includes much talk of basketball players having been on that flight.

You can imagine what that made a lot of people think.

Reuters reporter Olga Dzyubenko has good news for fans of Sam Perkins, but terrible news for basketball and humanity generally. Apparently there was a teenage basketball team on the plane, and the majority of the players were killed.

Awful.

However, the implication from the embassy is that Perkins was apparently not on the flight -- which makes sense, as it was bound for Iran:

Members of a teenage basketball team were among the dead and officials said many of the victims were so badly burnt that DNA tests would be needed to identify them.

Only 25 of the estimated 90 people aboard the aircraft, survived -- 14 of them Kyrgyz nationals and 11 Iranians.

The U.S. embassy in Kazakhstan denied two U.S. basketball players, in Kyrgyzstan on a coaching trip, had taken the ill-fated flight. They in fact flew home from neighbouring Kazakhstan.

(Thanks to Tobias from BallinEurope.)