Reports: Delonte West Won’t Be Released Due To Fight

Posted by Brian Robb on Oct 29, 2010 103196 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F2010%2F10%2F29%2Freports-delonte-west-wont-be-released-due-to-fight%2FReports%3A+Delonte+West+Won%27t+Be+Released+Due+To+Fight2010-10-29+20%3A26%3A32Brian+Robbhttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F%3Fp%3D10319

UPDATE: Ainge spoke to The Boston Herald, who confirmed the fight and said there would be no consequences for either party:

Danny Ainge confirmed there was an altercation today between Delonte West and Von Wafer, but he denied there would be any repercussions.

“There was something that happened, and we’re handling it internally,” Ainge said moments ago. “We’re happy with Delonte and Von and how they’ve been playing, and today was unacceptable.”

Chris Mannix of SI.com, another guy with close Celtic ties (former C’s ballboy) tweets:
the good news for West

Despite fight between Delonte West and Von Wafer–the second spat between two this month–BOS not expected to release West, sources say. West and Wafer have a lot of animosity and this happened early, but the truth is fights in practice are relatively common in the NBA.

I’ll have much more analysis of this whole situation in the coming hours, but for now this is ultimately good news if you are a C’s fan. West had a tremendous postseason and really shores up the team’s backcourt despite all of his flaws. He has probably run out of extra chances already, but this early in the year, given the entire backstory to this situation I’m not surprised Danny gave him another shot.

He’s going to have to be on his best behavior for the rest of the year, but ultimately this team needs West if it wants to get back to the promise land.

In what could be ultimately just as big of a story in this is how fast this story got out. As Mannix said, fights happen all the time in practice, but rarely do they get out in public, especially this quickly. Although Wafer obviously wasn’t the instigator in this fight, it seems likely that he or his people have been feeding Kennedy a bit too much internal info, be it the “meds” comment, or the circumstances surrounding this fight.

The fact he was even talking about the meds issue at all, which is obviously a sensitive subject for West doesn’t make him an innocent bystander in this scenario if indeed it was true.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not blaming Wafer at all for the fight situation, but this is definitely something the C’s would have much preferred to deal with internally and you can bet that message will be made clear to Von and those close to him.

For now, I’m very curious to see how the C’s locker room will address the situation tonight, if at all. I will be reporting live from the C’s locker room before the game and will keep you all posted on the latest.

I’m also interested to see though how everyone feels about this? Are you surprised Delonte was given another chances? What’s your feeling about Wafer’s role in all this? And how much will this affect the locker room?