NBA stars try to move on after public heated words.
Minnesota Timberwolves guard J.J. Barea has vowed not to let his body language on the bench affect the rest of the team again this season.
Barea admitted he was out of line when he appeared visibly to be upset or sulking on the bench during the fourth quarter of the Timberwolves” recent home loss to the Phoenix Suns.
“I wish Kevin would’ve just came up to me, face to face, man to man, and just said it,” Barea said after the Minnesota Timberwolves’ shootaround Friday morning.
“But it’s no big deal. We’re over it. We’re done with that. We learned from that. If we want to win, we have to play as a team and stay together as a team. We’re done with that and we have a game tonight.”
Love, the leader of the team and a strong candidate for MVP honours this season, took aim at Barea and Dante Cunningham, although he did not mention the later by name, for the way they affected team morale as the team continued to fight to get above .500.
We can’t have two guys sitting at the end of the bench that play good minutes just sitting there and not getting up during timeouts,” Love said. “We all need to be in this together. That kind of pisses me off. We’re supposed to be a team.”
Cunningham gave a more curt response when about Love’s comments and if he thought they were out of line.
“We’ve all got to learn and we’re all learning together and we move as a unit,” he said. “That’s where we are right now.”
Timberwolves president Flip Saunders said the incident had been dealt with and didn’t expect it to be an issue with the team moving forward.
“In this day and age, you have to figure out how you say it,” Coach Rick Adelman said Friday night before the team’s 119-92 win over the Charlotte Bobcats. “Because it’s going to be there forever. We dealt with it yesterday. We talked about it. Just trying to figure out how we’re going to win the game tonight.”
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