Talk about a rivalry between the hometown basketball and football teams.
Washington Redskins quarterback Kirk Cousins said at a press conference early in training camp last month that he hoped the Redskins would “be the San Antonio Spurs of the NFL.”
On Thursday, the Redskins tweeted a photo of Cousins holding a No. 8 Spurs jersey with his last name on the back, saying “One step closer to being the San Antonio Spurs of the @NFL. (Thanks @spurs!).”
One step closer to being the San Antonio Spurs of the @NFL: https://t.co/hL94t10s4R
— Washington Redskins (@Redskins) September 1, 2016
(Thanks @spurs!) pic.twitter.com/lhXWb25c05
The tweet created quite the response on Twitter, with 226 retweets and 306 likes.
But one response in particular, the Washington Wizards, had a different view. The local NBA team in D.C. didn’t take too kindly to the shoutout.
Presumably in jest, the Wizards responded by tweeting, “@We don’t like that.”
.@Redskins We don’t like that.
— Washington Wizards (@WashWizards) September 1, 2016
As a response of their own, the Redskins clarified by tweeting the transcript of Cousins’ original quote from Aug. 14.
“I’ve told my teammates that I’d like to be the San Antonio Spurs of the NFL, be super boring and maybe people at the end of the season just go, ’Wow, they really had a good year and no one really talked about it.’ I don’t need to promote my self. I don’t need to promote what we’re doing. We have plenty of people here who are very good at doing that if we play well enough. I just want to play football. I don’t want to worry about anything else, and I found from playing at Michigan State and playing even before that, if you win football games, everything else takes care of itself. It’s pretty simple. It’s a pretty simple recipe.”
— Kirk Cousins, 8/14/2016
Fans won’t have to wait long to see the teams battle for Cousins’ allegiance. The Spurs and Wizards play twice in a two-week stretch. The Spurs visit the Verizon Center on Sat. November 26 while Wizards travel to San Antonio on Friday, December 2.
• Kevin Leitzell can be reached at kleitzell@washingtontimes.com.
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