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Giants CEO Mara Discusses Plaxico Situation
By
Jen Chung
Published Apr 10, 2009
Modified Apr 10, 2009
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By
Jen Chung
Published Apr 10, 2009
Modified Apr 10, 2009
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A week after the Giants released wide receiver Plaxico Burress from the team, the team's president and CEO John Mara spoke with Chris "Mad Dog" Russo about the player, what the Giants should have done, and their future.
Russo brought up how Mayor Bloomberg slammed the team for not telling the police about the shooting after Burress's teammate Antonio Pierce contacted the Giants. Mara said:
"I told [Bloomberg] I took real exception to those statements because we reported that incident as soon as we found out about it to NFL security, which is what we're supposed to do. And NFL security did notify the NYPD, and there's a dispute as to when exactly that happened. But as I understand the facts, they notified them in a timely (manner). There was some miscommunication about what hospital he was in, but any notion that there was any kind of attempt to cover this up is just ridiculous. And I told the Mayor that I didn't appreciate his comments on that and that he had his facts wrong. But that's in the past.
Russo then suggested that he and Mara would have probably called the police first, instead of calling the team first as Pierce did, to which Mara said, "I think you're probably right about that, but everybody has their ways of reacting to a situation like that where you have a friend who's all of a sudden been shot and you're trying to get him to the hospital. I'm not going to necessarily second-guess him on that. I think he, at the very least, used poor judgment being in that night club at that hour two days before we're playing." Mara also said that Jerry Reese had tried contacting the Burress many times after the shooting but the player never responded. He added that Burress was absolutely a reason why they went to and won the Super Bowl. More, including what Mara's late father would think of PSLs, from a partial transcript here.
Just before the Giants announced they'd be moving on without him, Burress's gun case was adjourned until June (Burress apparently hopes to work out a plea deal with the Manhattan DA's office for the accidental but ultimately illegal firing of his gun in Midtown Manhattan last fall). That was apparently another reason why the Giants felt they needed to release him.
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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