Video: Metta World Peace And James Harden Aren’t On Speaking Terms

Even when Metta World Peace is mired in the middle of a seven-game suspension, he’s still worried about business. World Peace, rocking an eponymous T-shirt in Conan O’Brien‘s guest chair Monday night, said that the possibility of meeting Oklahoma City in the Western Conference’s second round means he hasn’t talked to Thunder guard James Harden about his elbow blast to the head on April 22.

“I wanted to make sure he’s OK first so I did that but to call him, you know, knowing he was going to be OK. But to call him? I could not call him right now because we have games to play.”

World Peace, it seems got in contact with “third parties” of Harden and himself to preserve a playoff buffer. (As a side note, Nuggets fans, did you hear him say he didn’t want to chat with any OKC players because he knew “that we’re going to play them”?) But, being a guy who found a place in our list of best press conferences in sports history, World Peace wasn’t content to keep the interview vanilla. He went after ex-Bad Boy Bill Laimbeer‘s criticism (“This guy clearly in the 80s was like, playing exactly how I play now”) and then stronger at an unnamed former teammate who works in TV — Reggie Miller?

“A lot of hypocrites. … When you get a player that you played with, that you were in the same locker room with, that’s talking about you on TV because he has a new job, this new gig or whatever, and he’s talking about you. It’s like, come on man. You were in the locker room and you asked me to protect you.”

Reggie asking for protection on the court? I find that hard to believe for a guy, who like World Peace himself, got along great with everybody in the NBA in his time.

What do you think of his explanation?

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