by Marcel Mutoni / @marcel_mutoni
It’s been an awful year for the Detroit Pistons. They’re 14 games under .500, the players and the coach have feuded publicly and the team’s biggest stars are on the trade block.
For Richard Hamilton, things have been especially difficult, and last night, he did not play a single minute against the Grizzlies in a loss at home.
Head coach John Kuester claims there’s nothing abnormal about what took place — because, y’know, guys who are the most recognizable players on an NBA team get benched all time — but Rip isn’t convinced.
The Free Press reports:
“I came to the game tonight with my same routine that I was going to play,” he said. “Ain’t nobody warn me, tell me anything. I just came out ready to play the game. I was definitely surprised, you know? Do I think it was a level of disrespect or unfair or anything like that? I’ll leave that to ya’ll, you know?”
Hamilton admitted it was tough to be in the situation he was in. “When you’re not playing, it’s like, what did I do?” Hamilton said. “I can’t control my playing time. I can’t control what happens. The only thing I can do is continue to do what I do, and that’s try to get myself, ready to play basketball.” Hamilton said if he wanted to play Wednesday, he couldn’t control that.
“I was always happy here,” Hamilton said. “My thing was just I wanted to play basketball.”
Hamilton’s teammate Tayshaun Prince had the best reaction to the DNP-CD, as he characterized the move as “buffoonery”.
Hamilton has been accused this season of quitting on the team, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that his days in Motown are numbered.
If the team is determined to trade him away, which they certainly appear to be, wouldn’t it make more sense to showcase him instead of gluing him to the bench?
