J.J. Redick took getting traded out of Orlando personal, from Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports: “On his way out of Orlando, the general manager’s words stayed with J.J. Redick: It’s nothing personal, Rob Hennigan told him. “But it is personal,” Redick says now… “My wife Chelsea and I built a life in Orlando,” Redick told Yahoo! Sports. “Listen, there was no anger [over the trade], but there was a little bit of disappointment. “Part of me wishes I could’ve been there my whole career and been part of the rebuilding, part of the turnaround, and gotten back to the finals in my 11th or 12th year. That’s the romantic in me, the idealist.”
- Redick, by the way, took a shot at Dwight Howard, stating the center’s unwillingness to put any blame on himself for anything bad. Michael Middlehurst-Schwartz of USA Today has details: Former Magic shooting guard J.J. Redick echoed those sentiments. “I’m not surprised by it,” Redick, now with the Milwaukee Bucks, told ESPNLosAngeles.com on Wednesday. “I would be more surprised when Dwight starts taking responsibility. That would be the most negative thing I can say, but that’s the truth. “You can’t take all the credit and not accept any of the blame.”
True to what Redick said, Howard tried to backtrack on what he said in his interview, from Mike Bresnahan of Los Angeles Times: “Howard, however, later said Nelson and Lewis misinterpreted his comment because the media “twisted it into a negative thing” while relating his words to Orlando players. “I never meant any disrespect to none of my former teammates,” Howard said after the Lakers’ 108-102 victory Wednesday over New Orleans. “My statement was just to say that our team that I played with in Orlando, we were the underdogs. Nobody really talked about our team. Everybody overlooked us for the whole time I was there in Orlando and I hated that. We all hated that.”
Former NBA player Renaldo Balkman now plays in the PBA. He may not be for long after losing his cool and choking his own teammate, from Richard Dy of spin.ph: “The game was all but over in the dying seconds when a frustrated Balkman lost the plot after a non-call on an offensive play late in the match at the Smart Araneta Coliseum, confronting the referees and later shoving away Petron coaches and players who tried to pacify him. The 6-6 former New York Knick first have Petron assistant coach Biboy Ravanes a push, then later shoved Ronald Tubid as his teammate tried to get between him and the referees. When Santos stepped in and retaliated after being shoved by the import, Balkman completely lost it.”
Doug Collins had many excuses for why the 76ers have had a tough season. Then he stated there are no excuses, from John Gonzalez of CSNPhilly: “Anytime you miss the playoffs, it should hurt,” Collins allowed. “When anytime the season is over and you go home and you turn on the playoff games and you’re not part of it, that should be very painful. All the guys want to make the playoffs. There’s not a guy in our locker room that doesn’t want to be in the playoffs. Our guys, I feel badly for them, what they’ve had to go through this year with the injuries and everything like that has been very tough. We’ve lost Jrue for some games and Thad the games he missed I think we were 1-9. We lost Swaggy. We lost two starters. We traded away a lot. “You know, the plans that we had this year for this season, we really haven’t been able to see that. There’s no excuses. Nobody is going to make any excuses for anybody.”
