Latrell Sprewell had considered asking Byron Scott about the coach’s critical remarks about him, but the Knick forward backed off yesterday, saying it wasn’t important enough.
“I could care less about talk, honestly,” Sprewell said before last night’s Knicks-Nets tilt at the Meadowlands. “If that’s something he likes doing, so be it. I’m not going to get caught up in that game.”
Based on Scott’s season history, talking is clearly something that the coach does like doing. When Antonio McDyess was lost for the year during a preseason game, Scott criticized Don Chaney for playing the All-Star too much. A few months later, Scott claimed that Knicks-Nets wasn’t a rivalry, essentially because you need two good teams to qualify.
Read: We’re good, the Knicks aren’t.
Then last week Scott said he had no interest in having Sprewell on his team, a claim the coach backed up with criticism of Sprewell’s past tardiness.
“I don’t like guys who are on their own time,” Scott said. “Spree comes to practice when he wants to, comes to games when he wants to. He sets a bad example for other guys.”
So where’s it all coming from? When the Knicks were soaring during the 1990’s, they rarely, if ever, engaged in trash talk with their miserable rivals across the river. Now that the teams’ places in the standings have been reversed, the Nets have fired away with the verbal barbs.
“They have [chosen to talk more],” Sprewell said. “I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s not going to affect us in any way, except maybe a little motivation.”
But other Knicks didn’t even admit to extra motivation, swearing they couldn’t care less about what the Nets have said.
“I’ve never been one to get caught up in words,” Allan Houston said.