He recalled the big conflict with the coach!
Mike James once found himself in the public spotlight, because of the conflict with Dimitris Itoudis.
We heard several versions of the story then, and now it is Mike James told his. Allegedly, everything happened after the death of his grandfather:
“It was January and the team was playing great. We were getting on the plane and I got a text from my mother. She told me to call her. When I called her, she told me that my grandfather had passed away. I was not well. I was named after my grandfather. The next day I spoke to Itudis and he told me I could go home whenever I wanted. But, he said, if it was up to him, he would tell me to leave when we have a break in February. But then it was the third or fourth of January. I remember we had a game on Thursday and the funeral was on Saturday. I waited for the papers because the flight was on Friday, but there was no answer. The general manager of the team contacted me, but I told him that the coach said I could go whenever I wanted. He told me I had to do two practices to play in the game, which meant I had 36 hours, and the flight from Moscow to Portland was very long. I didn’t care about the game, but I was playing and I got hurt. I had an argument with the coach, a real explosion, and I watched the funeral on the Internet.” – said James for “Sportdog”, and then added:
“I wasn’t in training for a week and a half, and when I came back, four days later, my brother died. Then I just said I was going, I didn’t wait for an answer. When I returned to Russia, I saw that they had brought Ife Lundberg. Everything is fine between the two of us, by the way. After that, everything went better with Itudis, we smoothed out the relationship, but I lost all respect for him. I used to respect him, but then I thought ‘shut up’ whenever he said something.” – concluded the great defender.
Source: hotsport.rs
