Friday, November 17, 2006

JO Drama Carries into Pacers-Nets Game

Mike Wells has a follow-up story in today's Star on JO's post-game chat with the Pacers' coaches and Larry Joe Legend. Predictably, JO spun the sitaution as him not being able to control how much he cares about the team and wanting to win.

"When you expect to win and you don't, and get beat the way we got beat, you're going to be a little bit more emotional," O'Neal said. "Maybe our conversation should have waited until (Thursday), until things calmed down a little bit. . . . In order to achieve the goal we want to achieve, you have to be willing to state your opinion. Whether you agree or not, at the end of the day you have to figure it out. At the end of the day we agreed things need to be altered a little bit in our approach and we walked away from it."

MAYBE the conversation should've waited? It definitely should've waited because whatever good intentions JO had regarding his opinion, marching past reporters in your uniform to the coaches office was the move of a drama queen. Reporters LOVE drama, so now it is a story around the league.

This story on Larry Bird in the Boston Herald mentions the incident as the writer witnessed the same thing as Mike Wells.

SI has a story posted about changes in store for the Pacers.

The shining light on the Pacers because of the post-game talk initiated by JO just blows the situation out of proportion and makes things seem worse than they really are. The Pacers are not shooting well from the floor and are struggling with rebounds. JO shot 3-14 against the Celts and wants to go down in the post more now. Fine, that's a pretty easy fix. Just fix it on the floor.

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