D’Antoni says Lakers fans could go root for another team if they didn’t like how the Lakers were playing. He decided to backtrack on those comments today.
“I was an idiot last night,” D’Antoni said after a light practice Tuesday in advance of the Lakers’ Christmas Day showdown with the Miami Heat. “I was out of my mind. I was ticked off. We didn’t play well and I said some stuff I shouldn’t have. It was stupid. That’s me, I just made a mistake.”
“To me, the meaning is this: We got a team that needs to overachieve and we have a lot of injuries and we’re in a tough state right now,” said D’Antoni, referring to the Lakers losing six of their past nine games, including two straight by a combined 46 points. “So, we need everybody to be pulling with us and it’s going to take the whole village to get this done. That was the meaning. I just said it wrong and it came out wrong because I was agitated. But I apologize, and we’ll move on. But we need everybody to be behind these guys. They’re going to play as hard as they can play.”