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On a night the Philadelphia 76ers reached 50 wins for the first time in 11 years, they honored the leader of their last 50-win club.

The 76ers became the first Eastern Conference team with 50 wins this season as they retired Charles Barkley's No. 34 and rode Allen Iverson's near triple-double to a 102-89 victory over the woeful Golden State Warriors.

"That's great because I've never been on a team in the NBA that won 50 games," Iverson said. "It's great. It all comes together. Everything that happened with Charles, winning the game, it being our 50th win, it was just a great night."

"It's a tremendous accomplishment," 76ers coach Larry Brown said. "Now, hopefully we'll get a little confidence from this game. It is an accomplishment when you consider four or five years ago we won 21 or 22, then 31."

With just their second win in eight games, Philadelphia improved to 50-22, one game behind San Antonio for the best record in the NBA. The 76ers surpassed last season's win total and reached 50 wins for the first time since the 1989-90 campaign.

That team won the Atlantic Division title and was powered by Barkley, who spent the first eight years of his 16-year career with the Sixers and in 1996 was named one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players.

Before a sellout crowd of 20,958 at the First Union Center, Barkley was honored in a halftime ceremony that included many family members, former coaches and teammates. He was brought to tears by a standing ovation and repeated his desire to enter the Basketball Hall of Fame as a Sixer before a banner bearing his No. 34 was hoisted to the rafters.

"It was especially nice with Charles here," Brown said. "The ceremony was phenomenal, seeing his number go up. He meant a lot to this franchise and this league. I personally admire the hell out of him. I thought it was really nicely done."

The prolonged ceremony seemed to spark the Sixers, who have had their troubles in the third quarter of late but instead turned a five-point halftime lead into a 77-61 advantage.

Iverson scored 17 in the period, just two shy of Golden State's total. He finished with 35 points, a career-high 11 rebounds and nine assists, just missing his first career triple-double.

"I really wanted it because I never did it before. To have a triple double, that's a great all-around game. And on a night like this when you have one of the greatest players to ever play the game, the whole all-around game, and he gets his jersey retired, it was something I wanted to look back on. It was a great night, my mom got to see Charles get his jersey retired, I got a chance to see it. It was something special, something I'll cherish for the rest of my life."

Tyrone Hill had a season-high 21 points and 14 rebounds for the Sixers, who went 16-12 against the powerful Western Conference this season. Philadelphia has won its last six meetings with Golden State.

Hill has a personal memory of playing against Barkley.

"I remember when I was a rookie and we played them at Golden State," he said. "He said to me `Rookie, you keep playing hard like you've been playing and you'll be in the league a long time.' He knows all about work ethic."

Antawn Jamison scored 32 points for the Warriors, who have lost seven in a row on the road and 22 of 24 overall since the All-Star break.

The Sixers never trailed after using a 7-0 spurt to open a 9-2 lead. They led 23-19 after one quarter and by 10 points in the second period before settling for a 47-42 halftime lead.

The ceremony for Barkley lasted 30 minutes, more than twice as long as a normal halftime, which did not bode well for the Sixers. In their last six losses, they had managed just 102 points in the third quarter.

A 3-pointer by Jamison pulled Golden State within 54-52 with 7:36 left before Philadelphia rattled off 14 consecutive points. Iverson had two 3-pointers and Hill and George Lynch had two baskets each during the spurt, which gave the Sixers a 68-52 advantage with 3:28 remaining.

"Iverson just took over," Warriors coach Dave Cowens said. "We went down by 14 and he made two 3-pointers. Of the 14 points, he accounted for six of them. Great players step up when they have to and that's what he did tonight. That's when the game got away."

"We knew that we couldn't let then stay in the game and gain some confidence," Hill said. "So, we stepped it up defensively and we got some easy baskets and got some easy looks."

Philadelphia led 77-61 entering the fourth quarter and opened its largest lead at 92-71 on a basket by Jumaine Jones with 6:25 to go.

Shaquille O'Neal, the man with four rings, 28,596 career points and scores of nicknames, has finally decided to call it quits, ending one of the most colorful careers in NBA history that will surely culminate with a Hall of Fame induction.

O'Neal, 39, officially announced his retirement Wednesday using the new social media tool Tout, a real-time video messaging service.

"Once a businesman, always a businessman," O'Neal said, smiling. "I am the emperor of the social media network. Why text when you can Tout?"

O'Neal signed a two-year contract with the Boston Celtics last summer but a persistent Achilles injury will prevent him from fulfilling the terms of the deal. O'Neal first injured his right Achilles on Christmas Day and was able to play only in two of the final 35 games of the regular season.

On April 3 against Detroit, O'Neal returned to the court after a two-month absence and scored six points in a spirited 5 minutes and 29 seconds before coming up lame and limping off the floor. Although his injury was listed as a strained calf, O'Neal said it was the Achilles flaring up again.

"I felt like someone had shot me in the back of my leg," he said.

O'Neal did not play again in the regular season. He sat out the New York Knicks playoff series then tried to return in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against his old team, the Miami Heat. O'Neal logged 8 1/2 minutes in the 97-81 victory but woke up in considerable pain the next morning. His final game was two days later, when he toiled for three minutes of Game 4 before Celtics coach Doc Rivers pulled him for good.

In the final weeks of the the playoffs, O'Neal, over the objections of team physician Brian McKeon, had "more than five" cortisone shots in his Achilles in an attempt to play against the Heat.

"Doc (McKeon) kept telling me, 'No, no,' but I wanted to play so badly," O'Neal said. "My feeling was, 'If it ruptures, it ruptures.' The Celtics were so good to me I wanted to do everything I could to get back on the court for them."

Throughout his time on the sideline, Shaq said, he continued to do rehab as well as work on the treadmill and the exercise bike. He swam each evening at the Thoreau Club in Concord and shot a number of late-night free throws in at the Lincoln-Sudbury High School gymnasium across the street from his rented Sudbury home. He lost 35 pounds and was "feeling great everywhere except for that one little spot behind my heel."

Shaq said McKeon recommended surgery that would "clean up" the area around the Achilles, but O'Neal revealed the recovery time would be close to nine months.

"I really, really thought about coming back," he said, "but this Achilles is very damaged and if I had it done the recovery would be so long we'd have same outcome as this last year -- everyone sitting around and waiting for me.

"I didn't want to let people down two years in a row. I didn't want to hold Boston hostage again.

"I'm letting everybody know now so Danny (Ainge) and the organization can try to get younger talent. I would love to come back, but they say once the Achilles is damaged it's never the same. I don't want to take that chance."

O'Neal said his final months in Boston included some of the darkest days of his career because "I just hated to let the city of Boston down. I really grew to love the place. Everyone was so welcoming to me and treated me so great. They believed in me and they took care of me, especially the great people of Sudbury. I love that town."

O'Neal also had effusive praise for Rivers, whom, he said, was "one of the best I ever played for."

"I thought Doc was fabulous," O'Neal said. "He stressed 'team' all the time, never wavered on that. He kept everyone together. He's an amazing coach. I want to congratulate him on his five years (extension).

"He deserves it. He loves the organization, loves the players, and we all love him back."

O'Neal is acutely aware the Celtics posted a record of 21-4 when he was able to play 20 or more minutes this season. The chemistry he shared with the Big Three (Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen) and Rajon Rondo, he said, will be an enduring memory, leaving him to wonder what would have happened had he stayed healthy.

"We were supposed to win this year but 'supposed' doesn't count," he said. "The path was there for us. All the so-called super powers were gone -- LA, San Antonio. I really feel if I was on the court we would have done it, but I don't believe in 'ifs.' "

O'Neal said he wasn't prepared yet to reminisce about his long and prolific career, which produced three championships with the Lakers and one with the Heat. "Let's save that for the press conference on Friday," said O'Neal, who will hold that media event at his Isleworth home.