Advocate article on Q-Pon

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“I played the last two months or so on a really bad knee, and there were so many things I had to go through just to get on the court,” Pondexter said. “My knee would swell and then it couldn’t drain, and I’d go through so much therapy before the games, and a lot of it didn’t really make much of a difference. “So I was just going out there and playing with pure heart because I just didn’t want to let my teammates down. We were in a playoff push, and the ability to earn a starter’s spot was a goal and a dream since I’ve been in the NBA, so I wasn’t going to let that go, as long as I could still run when I was on the floor — no matter how much it hurt.”

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“They set up MRIs, and every time they set one up, he wouldn’t go,” Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry said. “He would not show. And so he got fined every time for not showing up. And so finally at the end, (General Manager Dell Demps) brought him in and said, ‘This is so uncharacteristic of you. I don’t understand it’. And (Pondexter) says, ‘If I go to the doctor, they’re going to examine my knee, and they’re going to tell me that I can’t play.’ ”

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