JaVale McGee’s Mother: ‘My Son is the Future of the NBA’

The last time many of us paid any mind to JaVale McGee’s mom, she was smooching Dr. J during the Dunk Contest. This time, she gives a fascinating interview to the WaPo about her son: “He is not a knucklehead,’ Pamela McGee says. ‘JaVale is a good kid. My son is special. He has gifts you can’t teach: hands, height and heart. If I’m the Wizards and I’m really trying to build a franchise, really committed to rebuilding and developing, I would nurture that talent. I would help a kid like JaVale the best I could.’ When McGee felt the need to lob the ball off the backboard for a look-at-me dunk in a loss on Monday instead of just routinely depositing the ball through the rim on a breakaway, he became the latest flashpoint for the Team That Doesn’t Get It. […] ‘I know people are making a big deal of that play,’ she says. ‘Look, JaVale does that to break up the monotony. Wouldn’t you if you were losing like this? He’s been here for four years and it’s been same ol’, same ol’. I don’t want him to get institutionalized to losing. My son is the future of the NBA. I don’t want him to be part of this culture of losing forever …. ‘The one thing I never did as a coach, never not once in my career, was throw my players under a bus,’ she said angrily in a clear reference to Flip Saunders’s criticism of McGee’s play earlier this week. ‘If I had a problem, I would take that player in the locker room and would let them know and we would work it out. I would never throw my player under the bus … One game, he goes in for 20 minutes; the next almost 40 minutes,’ she says. ‘Sometimes he can’t even get into a flow, they’re yanking him in and out so much.'”