NBC LA interviews Reeves Nelson as he defends himself frantically (VIDEO)
Here’s the video:
View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.
Reeves Nelson denies pretty much everything that Sports Illustrated accused him of. From injuring teammates purposely to urinating on Tyler Honeycutt’s clothes to stalking players as targets of his next blow.
Nelson does fess up to being a total jerk, saying he acted “immaturely” and that his dismissal from UCLA was warranted. He acknowledged that he was disrespectful towards Ben Howland and the team in general, and he took complete responsibility for his apathy towards the rules, agreeing that he was, indeed, “defiant.”
Nelson also said that it was his teammates that reached out to Nelson to dispute the article’s claims, rather than Nelson seeking some sort of support to defend himself. In fact, Nelson said he “woke up to text messages” from Drew Gordon and Tyler Honeycutt. To Nelson, his teammates are still “good friends” of his.
This is going to be incredibly interesting. Nelson was largely responsible for team chemistry issues that UCLA faced for the better part of two years. His demeanor and attitude rightfully got his butt kicked out of the basketball program. But the bigger issue here is that Coach Howland was probably not as negligent as some may think he had been with Nelson.
There’s a lot of defensive language being thrown around, not just from Nelson, but from Sports Illustrated, which stood firmly behind the story in response to Nelson’s lawyer demanding that SI redact the claims made.
No one knows what the hell is going on; we have no idea if the author, George Dohrmann, legitimately asked Reeves Nelson to confirm every single one of his actions. We also have no idea where Dohrmann got his information from.
But we also know that Nelson is an unpredictable dude. His attitude was always in need of adjustment, and in all fairness to Dohrmann, it’s feasible that Nelson did, in fact, abuse coaches and teammates.
While this is happening, UCLA is taking quite the hit in the press while Bruins fans across the Internet are in total disarray.
If we’re lucky, this thing ends sooner than it began. (Which it won’t.)