Bruce Bowen revealed how he was fired and defended his Kawhi comments

Bruce Bowen was a San Antonio Spur for a long time, but more recently he has been associated with the Los Angeles Clippers… until he was fired for comments about Kawhi Leonard.

The comments that became the focal point for Bowen’s firing came in June, when he had appeared on Sirius XM radio. They seem like pretty honest reactions to the whole Spurs saga and really didn’t seem all that impactful at the time (It’s not like this hasn’t been said before), but apparently this was too much for the Clippers:

“I think there’s nothing but excuses going on. First, it was, ‘Well I was misdiagnosed.’ Look here: You got $18 million this year, and you think that they’re trying to rush you? You didn’t play for the most part a full season this year. And you’re the go-to guy, you’re the franchise, and you want to say that they didn’t have your best interest at heart? Are you kidding me?

“I think he’s getting bad advice. I think what you’re starting to see now is an individual given a certain amount of advice and it’s not the right advice. Here it is: You were protected in San Antonio. You were able to come up during a time where you still could lean on Tim (Duncan), Tony (Parker) and Manu (Ginobili).”

It was the always trustworthy Woj who initially stated that this was the reason, but now Bruce Bowen confirmed it on the Dan Patrick show.

Dan Patrick: What did the Clippers say to you? Did they come out and just say, ‘Look, we’re not bringing you back because of the comments you made about Kawhi?’ Was it that, kind of, cut and dry?

Bruce Bowen:  Oh yeah it was, well basically ‘We don’t view your views that way, and because of your comments of Kawhi Leonard, we’re choosing to go a separate way’.

Dan Patrick: Who told you that?

Bruce Bowen: Uh, an individual within their organization who signed off on me being on board.

Dan Patrick: Yeah, it’s just bizarre. I mean, because I was told by somebody who’s with the Clippers who said, ‘Look, we’re not taking any chances here. We can’t, you know’, and I thought, man, you’re going to fire Bruce Bowen because he was honest about Kawhi, and therefore Kawhi might not want to play for the Clippers. Is that really what this is all about?

Bruce Bowen: One thing that I thought about in all of this is that Kawhi never said ‘I want to play for the Clippers’. Kawhi said he wanted to play for the Lakers. And so, um, you know unfortunately, if you’re going to run your organization based on hopes, maybe, and getting rid of others… Now, again, if I tore him down and I was disrespectful to him, that’s one thing. But that’s not the case. As an analyst, I’m supposed to talk about what I see and what I feel for this game that I love. And so, if you can’t do that, what does that say about your organization?

… But I don’t think I’m big enough that someone would say, ‘You know what, I’m not going there because Bruce Bowen is there and he’s on the mic. I’m not going to deal with that’, because I’m the same person who’s just going to call it how it is.

It’s hard to disagree with Bowen there, we really can’t imagine someone of Kawhi Leonard’s stature being that petty. Although with the Leonard sweepstakes starting next summer, perhaps no teams can take any risk.

The Raptors analysts better be careful when they’re talking about Leonard this season.