LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida – While wearing a pink shirt and shorts, Los Angeles Clippers striker Montrezl Harrell wasn’t making a fashion statement. When he arrived for his first NBA game since the season had shut down due to the pandemic, Harrell was making a statement about his recently deceased grandmother.
“My grandmother’s favorite color was pink,” Harrell said Tuesday. “She was very into that color. This is the color she wanted it to enter her inner life in the sky.”
So this is the color Harrell wanted to wear before playing in the Clippers’ win over the Dallas Mavericks on Monday in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series. Before entering the game, Harrell sat on the bench wearing a black T-shirt decorated with her photo.
Not only did Harrell want to honor the grandmother she described as “my biggest supporter, biggest fan and one of my best friends”. Harrell wanted to introduce the NBA world to the person who introduced him to the sport he loves after buying him countless small basketball hoops when he was a child.
“I destroyed thousands of these things. He kept getting them for me all the time,” Harrell said. “These are the greatest memories. But every memory I have with my grandmother is a special memory because just the kind of woman she is.”
Harrell’s recent memories have brought a lot of pain. The Clippers gave him approval to leave the NBA campus on July 17, so he flew to North Carolina. This set Harrell aside for all of the Clippers scrimmages and eight seeding games. It does not matter. Harrell found it more important to look after his sick grandmother. She also spent time with her parents, grandparents, two aunts, two brothers and her children after seeing them for most of the past five months during the pandemic.
“Family means a great deal to me,” Harrell said. “I tried to do everything in my power to support my family, keep my children, my loved ones around me in a good mood. This is the role I have taken on for my family for as long as I can remember. Not I can stop now. I will never stop. It just means I have to do it at an extremely higher level. “
On August 10, Harrell shared on his Instagram page that his grandmother passed away and that he would dedicate the season to her. Before he could do that, Harrell had to complete seven days of quarantine to adhere to the NBA’s health and safety protocols. During that time, he was mostly limited to in-room workouts with a stationary bike and dumbbells. He could also exercise outside his room, even if only for half an hour.
It is unclear why Harrell had to complete seven days of quarantine. The NBA allows a minimum of four days of quarantine as long as the player continues to receive daily negative COVID-19 tests and stays in contact with a health specialist.
“I just keep these feelings and expressions to myself,” Harrell said about his quarantine. “I don’t really want to be fined.”
Harrell’s mood brightened when he expressed gratitude to his teammates, who he said were “huge, huge uplifting factors all along.”
She thanked them for offering detailed written and spoken condolences after her grandmother’s death. He shared appreciation for them that they checked him frequently both when he was at home with the family and in his room during quarantine. He loved playing with them in Race 1, where he had six points out of 2 out of 5 in 15 minutes.
“I thought about myself after the game once I got to my room,” said Harrell. “At that moment I did most of my reflections. More emotions surfaced. Then it’s different to have someone here who means everything in the world to you, and you (were) constantly in communication with them every other day. They are always constantly you. I checked, I watched your games. “
Therefore, Harrell did not care how he will recover his conditioning and chemistry on the pitch after averaging 18.6 points and 7.1 rebounds as a finalist for the NBA’s sixth man award. Harrell said he “played basketball all summer” and “never really took a break.” Instead, Harrell feels that he will continue to feel pain for losing someone who meant so much.
“There’s no way to explain the things he’s done for me,” Harrell said. “It was my whole world.”
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