Reggie Miller was one of the most vicious trash-talkers in the NBA and even his teammates weren’t safe from receiving an earful. However, Al Harrington wasn’t too fond of the Hall of Famer’s verbal jibes and almost got into an altercation with the veteran in his rookie season.
Advertisement
During an appearance on Mark Jackson’s Come And Talk 2 Me podcast, Harrington recalled how the host and Miller once pushed his buttons enough to make him want to punch them.
After a testy practice with Jackson and the veteran guard, a rookie Harrington confided in forward Antonio Davis about his troubles with the duo. He told him that if the two guards continued this behavior, he wouldn’t hesitate to resort to violence. He said,
“One day in practice, you[Mark Jackson] and Reggie would not leave me alone… I went home that day and I was sitting in the kitchen because I was living with Antonio Davis my rookie year. He came in and he said something to me and the way I said it, he was like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’… I said, ‘Tomorrow either one of them say something me, I am swinging on them.’”
Davis advised Harrington against using force and explained that rookie hazing is the rites of passage every player in the league has to go through. His anger simmered and he avoided an altercation with Jackson and Miller.
Had the rookie gone through with it, perhaps the Hall of Fame guard would have been wary of hazing another rookie.
Reggie Miller put rookies in a blender
Croatian center Bruno Sundov, who spent two seasons with the Pacers, once revealed that Miller assigned duties to the four rookies during the 2000-01 season. One of them, Slovenian Primoz Brezec, had to perform his country’s national anthem in front of a packed NBA crowd. On Podcast Inkubator, Sundov said,
“Reggie Miller loved to do things differently for rookies, so he made Primoz sing his national anthem in front of 22 thousand people at center court. There were 3 or 4 rookies, and they had to make a performance for the audience, individually and together as a group.”
Sundov also revealed that Jamal Tinsley resented the rookie chores. He felt humiliated when Miller made him carry his bags. The young guard also paid $250,000 in fines because he did not follow the team rule of showering after practice and games and preferred taking it at home.
Hazing isn’t as common today as it was back then. However, a lot of stars have horror stories about veterans ill-treating them under the guise of it being the rite of passage for every player.
