The Magic didn’t expect Al Harrington would be able to play for them last season after a staph infection in his knee, and they wouldn’t allow him to hang around his teammates, as Harrington alleges in a first-person account with Bleacher Report’s Jared Zwerling.
“Orlando was more about rebuilding, but they could’ve been more professional about my situation,” Harrington wrote. “In fact, the general manager, Rob Hennigan, told my agent that I was done, saying I ‘cannot play.’ Those were his exact words. And I was like, ‘He has some nerve.’ He’s a 32-year-old young executive, and I’ve been in the league longer than him, I probably know more than him and he’s going to tell my agent I’m done, and not think my agent is going to tell me that. So, to me, it was like he told me that pretty much to my face.”
There’s more from the current Wizards forward among the latest from the Eastern Conference:
- Harrington, a free agent at season’s end, isn’t sure he wants to continue playing, and writes in the same piece that he’d ideally re-sign with the Wizards next season after the All-Star break to save early-season wear and tear on his body. He’d like to remain with the Wizards either as a player, coach, or executive, and says he’s had conversations with the team about his future.
- Rookie Peyton Siva is finally starting to see minutes for the Pistons, and though he doesn’t acknowledge the season’s final weeks as a de-facto audition, that’s exactly what it is, since his contract is non-guaranteed for 2014/15, writes MLive’s Brendan Savage.
- Phil Jackson should up his workload and act more like the team president he is and less like a consultant, opines Frank Isola of the New York Daily News, who thinks the Zen Master should take heed to the recent comments of former Knicks coach Larry Brown.
- Trevor Ariza of the Wizards and Shaun Livingston of the Nets, both set to hit unrestricted free agency this summer, are among the most vital-yet-overlooked players in the league, as Michael Pina of Sports On Earth examines.