The supposed hot blood simmering between James Harden and former teammate Chandler Parsons after Harden made some damaging comments indirectly demising Parsons’ additions for the Rockets, was probably blown out of proportion a tad by the media. The two former teammates patched things up at Team USA camp in Vegas according to CSNNW.com’s Chris Haynes.
Haynes chatted with both players, and it seems they bonded while at the casino together:
Thanks to TEAM USA for bringing them together in Las Vegas for training camp, Parsons said he and Harden found time in between time to chat and patch things up.
“We’ve been in the casinos together and everything,” Parsons said to CSNNW.com. “We talked about it and it’s in the past. We’ve been hanging out, talking. We played on the same team a few times here, which was cool to get back out there with him. There are no hard feelings.”
Harden insists that his initial comments about himself and Dwight Howard being the cornerstones and the others are just “role players,” was taken out of context by the media.
“There was never really any back and forth,” Harden told CSNNW.com. “I never said anything about Chandler. Chandler is in Dallas right now. I was just talking about my teammates. No matter what, if the Rockets are playing good, Dwight and James get the praise. If we’re doing bad, Dwight and James gets the bulk of criticism. The media, I guess, took another story and ran with it. Chandler and me are cool. We’re good.”
Parsons added, that the seeming feud “was blown out of proportion a little bit. No matter where I play, no matter where he plays, he’s one of my friends. I know he didn’t mean anything malicious or anything like that in his comments. So, we’re cool.”
Still, if you think this means the first Dallas-Houston meeting next season isn’t going to involve Parsons at full throttle, think again:
“It has always been a rivalry from the jump but I think with me going over there it’s definitely going to be a little more intense,” Parsons said. “I’m going to want to play well against them and they’re going to want to stop me from playing well against them. Those guys are my friends and I love them to death but when that ball goes up, it’s on.”
The 2014-15 NBA schedule has yet to be revealed, but ever since the public exchange between the two on Twitter and elsewhere — which wasn’t really a war of words, but some miscommunication between former teammates thrummed up by a media without much else to do — we’ve known the first Rockets-Mavs game is going to be a doozy.
Even though they were able to chat at the gaming tables in Vegas and mend whatever supposed beef the media helped play a role in creating, it’s still going to be a fun in-state rivalry between the current and former Rocket.
Was the Parsons-Harden feud blown out of proportion?
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