Here’s two wild stories from Paul George talking about times when Lance Stephenson pissed off Mike Dunleavy Jr. & Tyler Hansbrough during their days as Indiana Pacers.
(via The Old Man and The Three with JJ Redick and Tommy Alter):
Describes Stephenson taking Mike Dunleavy Jr.’s shoes:
“Lance didn’t have some shoes, and the equipment guy Josh [Conder], was our equipment guy in Indiana. He just gave Mike Dunleavy [Jr.] some Kobes and he boxed them up, put them on his seat. So Mike’s expecting these Kobes on his chair. So Mike walks in, and he’s like, ‘Josh, where are my shoes at?’ Lance ripped out the inner soles, put them in a box, shut the box, and just took the Kobes out. So Mike opens the box and just sees his soles in there. He’s like, ‘Who the f*** took my soles out and left them in a box and took my shoes!’
“Like 10 minutes later, you hear Lance coming in, and he turns the corner and it’s these fresh Kobes on. And Mike’s like, ‘No way! Lance, what the f*** are you doing?’ And Lance is like, ‘Yo, what? Oh, these is yours? Yo, I just saw some shoes. I didn’t know they were yours. My bad, yo.’ Mike was so hot, man. Mike was so mad. And it was funny as hell because that was Lance. Lance would do the wildest s***, but he was the best teammate, most funniest guy I’ve been around.”
On Stephenson & Tyler Hansbrough getting into it:
“I remember Tyler Hansbrough had some like ear infection. So his ear was like sensitive and it was bothering him. So after the game, we’re walking back to our locker, Lance goes up to Tyler like, ‘Let’s go MFer!’ Screams loud as f*** in his ear. Tyler’s like, ‘Yo, what the f***, man! What are you doing?’ And he just chases Lance in the locker room. We had to break the two, we had to separate the two, but it was just Lance, man. He was the prankster, he was the jokester, he was a fun locker room guy, man. It was great times with Lance.”
