Tayshaun Prince, John Kuester exchange heated words
Tayshaun Prince and head coach John Kuester had an intense argument during their 101-97 loss against the Golden State Warriors on Monday 15 November at the Oracle Arena in Oakland.
The exchange of words began when Prince did not fight through a screen that led to a Reggie Williams’ three-pointer, which gave the Warriors a huge 25-point lead at the 4:27 mark of the second
quarter. Kuester went to call a time-out and he shouted at Prince, who fought back by expressing his own disappointment.
Although Prince admitted that the incident was just part of the game, he took the blame for it and said that he is hoping that it will not happen again, although he did not gave a guarantee
that it will be the last time that the two of them will argue.
“I can’t say it won’t [happen again] because I’m the type of guy that if I don’t see something right, I got to say something,” said Prince. “It’s something that happens; you can call me the
bad guy. It is part of the game. Maybe the way I handled it was not the right way. When you are getting beat by 30 early, strange things happen.”
Prince was benched for the remainder of the first half, but he returned in the second half and helped Detroit trim a 32-point lead to two points, but they fell short and absorbed their fourth
loss in their first 11 games this season.
“I voiced my opinion, and he voiced his,” said Prince, who finished with 15 points on 7-for-13 shooting from the floor. “We were getting our heads bashed in, and I felt I had something to
say and he felt that he had something to say. It’s a situation where everything we were trying to do out there, nothing was going our way.”
Kuester, on the other hand, declined to talk about it after the game, but he said that the kind of incident happens normally in an emotional game. “The game is emotional,” he said. “The game
is played with passion. That is what is needed at that stage of the game, that passion. And I thought Tayshaun responded in the second half.”
Ben Gordon and Austin Daye have previously expressed their disappointment about Kuester’s decision-making and in-game adjustments, while Rodney Stuckey was benched after not following the
instructions given by Kuester in their game against the Atlanta Hawks on 3 November.
Tags: