Staff Blog
More From Elton Brand’s LA Clipper Departure
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Bill Simmons, writing for this week’s ESPN the magazine, abandons his straight fan column and instead chats up Baron Davis about being on the trade block as the deadline passes. He glosses over some stuff (Baron basically admits to loafing and is already openly looking forward to next year) but no one has ever accused Simmons of not having (or hiding) his biases and the entire article is worth a read.
It’s available HERE.
Still, it’s Baron’s take on Elton Brand that caught my eye. Simmons asks Davis if he’s still close with the Sixers’ injured power forward, and the prolific PG responds thusly:
“Was a friend,” Baron says. Past tense. Elton ignored Davis’ “What’s going on?” texts for three days, finally responding to say his own negotiations had broken down because the Clippers “didn’t treat him right.” Brand soon landed in Philly. Baron called to wish him well, but they haven’t talked since. When the Clippers played Philly in November, the ex-friends didn’t even make eye contact. “It is what it is,” Baron says.
That is a pretty harsh way to describe a relationship, especially when you’re talking with press, and it is surprising to hear that was how EB went out. We knew that Brand’s divorce from the Clippers got ugly, but I’ve at least attributed much of that to a David Falk power-grab. When everything was going down last summer I checked in with a couple of local LA writers trying to gauge is the venom coming out of LA was justified. The response I got back, in short, was that Brand had always been a stand up citizen.While it certainly looked like he was backing out a handshake agreement, the Clippers were more likely the bad guy than not. I don’t know if this changes anything, and if anything it corroborates the speculation that the Clippers didn’t, in fact, treat Brand right. Still, not keeping Baron in the loop doesn’t speak well to the power forward’s character.
I guess it’s just the next thing in the $80 million dollar man’s bad, bad season.
Who cares about Elton Brand? The Clips got Zach Randolph who is good enough for me.