When Amar'e Stoudemire and the Knicks reached a buyout agreement last month and Stoudemire decided to take his talents to Dallas to play for the Mavericks, he likely thought that all the losing he experienced in New York was in his rear-view mirror. Finally, he was joining a winning organization that could help him get back to the NBA Playoffs and, possibly, allow him to realize his dream of winning the first NBA title of his career. But so far, his time in Dallas has been anything but a dream.
Since signing with the Mavericks, the team is just 5-6 and has slipped all the way down to the seventh seed in the Western Conference playoff race. So after they lost to the Cavaliers 127-94 last night, Stoudemire went out of his way to call out his new Mavericks teammates—and to let them know that he did not come to Dallas to lose.
"I came here to win," he told reporters, "and we're 4.5 games out of being out of the playoffs, which is unacceptable. This is something we can't accept. We've got to find a way to refocus. We've got to key into the details of the game of basketball."
Stoudemire continued by saying that he believes the Mavs need to take a new approach to practices and games.
"We can't cheat the game," he said. "We can't screw around in games and practices and joke around all the time and figure we're going to win games. This is the pros. It's the highest level of basketball. We've got to act that way."
Stoudemire is clearly frustrated. And frankly, we don't blame him. He's lost—a lot—over the last couple years, but he's running with a team that should be playing much better than they're playing right now. So it'll be interesting to see how they respond to Stoudemire's comments and how they look when they take the court against the Clippers on Friday night.
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[via ESPN]
