My, oh, my, things sure are getting heated between the Brooklyn Nets and Miami Heat.
While both teams dished small verbal barbs over the offseason, the past few days have become incredibly potent, starting with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade questioning why Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry didn’t catch similar flack to that of Ray Allen when he left the Celtics to join the Heat.
That lead to Kevin Garnett suggesting that James needs to mind his own business while Pierce took his talking to the court, hip checking James hard during a preseason game.
The quiet man in all of this has been Jason Terry, who up until Friday hadn’t said anything publicly. But after practice on Friday morning, Terry spoke, suggesting that the Nets don’t care what James thinks:
"“He’s entitled to his own opinion,” Terry said about James on Friday, “which we don’t care about.”"
The relatively quiet Deron Williams finally spoke up as well, suggesting that James was intending to send a message with his dunk – a message the Nets weren’t going to allow him to deliver while they gave one right back:
"“I mean, if you looked at LeBron when he caught it, the way he took off, he was about to send a message,” point guard Deron Williams said of James going full speed toward the basket before Pierce’s shoulder check. “So I think it was just Paul stopping him from getting a clear [path] to the lane."