The morning after the Lakers finished their worst postseason in franchise history, the Lakers started their first day of exit interviews. Chris Duhon, Metta World Peace, Steve Nash, Earl Clark, Devin Ebanks, Andrew Goudelock, Robert Sacre, Jodie Meeks and Jordan Hill were all in attendance. First up was Lakers guard Chris Duhon, who said that this was the craziest year he’s ever been a part of.
“This is probably the craziest year I’ve been a part of, everything that could go wrong went wrong…The talent the expectations we had, we definitely had the team that was capable of winning a championship, we just didn’t have the opportunity to put it all together.”
Chris Duhon showed support for Lakers Head Coach Mike D’Antoni. Duhon stressed that his system is “simple, but complicated,” and that it “needs time and a training camp.” Duhon said he learned more this year than he has in his whole career. And, despite the struggles of this season, Dwight Howard deserves to be acknowledged as one of the best.
“He should be one of those guys who eventually gets a statue.”
Metta World Peace did not want to answer contract questions about his future with the Lakers organization. Naturally, because Peace has a player option in his contract, in which he can opt in or opt out, it was a topic of conversation. However, he only had this to say,
“Right now it’s all about coming back next year and winning…I told my agent don’t call me about it…”
Peace also opened up about getting used to Dwight Howard’s personality.
“Took me a bit to get used to his personality. His personality was just different than what everybody was used to.”
When asked to elaborate, he described Dwight as “always happy” but “in crunch-time, he’s very serious.”
Metta thought that there may have been too much pressure on Dwight. He also went as far to say that he had too much responsibility.
“I think we put a little bit too much pressure on Dwight, and as responsible leaders we gave him a little too much responsibly…Kobe, Pau, myself…we weren’t responsible enough, we should have been louder voices.”
As far as D’Antoni, his main criticism was actually that as a team they didn’t let him coach, and he said the same thing about Mike Brown.
“I don’t think we let him coach at times.”
Next Page: Steve Nash And Earl Clark