LA Clippers center DeAndre Jordan gave his side of the story to The Players’ Tribune, breaking down what happened during his free agency debacle earlier this month.
The big fella doesn’t address leaving Mark Cuban, Chandler Parsons and the rest of the Dallas Mavericks high-and-dry at the last minute; instead choosing to focus on what drew him back to the Clips.
Blake Griffin also penned a piece about the infamous, and wildly-exaggerated “hostage” situation at Jordan’s offseason home in Houston.
The big fella says that staying in LA, ultimately, was the right decision:
Let’s just say that free agency wasn’t what I expected it to be. I thought it was going to be fun. I thought it was going to be like when I got recruited during college. But as it turns out, deciding what your future is going to be like is mostly a headache. For a second, the attention felt good, but after you think about everything and get out all the glitz and glamour from the process, you kind of start to think about what’s really best for you as a player and as a person — on and off the floor.
As everyone knows, I struggled with it. It was nine or ten days of intense pressure. Every night I would have a different scenario in my head, of the city and team where I thought I would fit best. I had several meetings with teams and even more conversations with my family and friends. I kept thinking about what it really meant to be “home” and I would go back and forth.
It seems crazy, but I’m actually the “oldest” Clipper — I’ve been here for seven years. When I was a rookie we went 19-63. We were really bad. It’s a terrible feeling to lose 63 games in a season. Then we got Blake and things started to turn around. We became a destination where people really want to come and play and contend for a championship. When we traded for Chris (Paul), it was on. […] I love Chris, man. Chris is a big brother to me. When you play sports, you’re competitive — especially when you play them at as high a level as we have these last few years. And of course, yeah, we all bump heads during the course of the game. But we know that whatever criticisms or arguments we have on the floor, they’re about one thing: winning.
