Montrezl Harrell shocked everyone around the league when he decided to join the Los Angeles Lakers after spending the 2019/20 season with the Los Angeles Clippers. Even though a lot of people saw that as a snake move, Harrell made it clear that he wanted to be with the Clippers but he never felt the Clippers felt that way about him.
He took a different route this offseason and agreed to sign with the Lakers, trying to win the ring that he couldn’t get last season. Not everybody is sold on Harrell’s comments, though, including ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who asked the player to ‘stop lying’ about the way things happened and what prompted his departure from the Clippers. During a recent edition of First Take, the NBA analyst took a jab at Harrell for his remarks.
“I will say this, Montrezl Harrell needs to stop lying to some degree or people need to stop lying on him because we’ve heard about the friction between him and Paul George and how that led to a lack of appreciation he felt he was receiving from the organization as a whole. Either that’s the story or there’s a whole bunch of people lying on him because you see those reports all over the place,” Smith said.
Shortly after the Clippers were eliminated from playoffs contention in the Orlando bubble, a series of reports surfaced indicating that Harrell and Paul George had had some sort of rift during the season, which led to a locker room break up. Paul George and Kawhi Leonard’s superstar treatment within the organization was also reported to be an issue for the rest of the players, something that damaged the Clips’ chemistry even before the suspension of the league.
Harrell seemingly wasn’t having any of that and he decided to take his talents to crosstown rivals Lakers. That was a shock for his former teammates but the player isn’t too worried about it.
