Orlando Magic star Aaron Gordon has admitted that some people stopped liking him after his role in this year's hit basketball movie Uncle Drew.
The film - which features a heavy cast of NBA names such as Kyrie Irving, Shaquille O'Neal, Chris Webber, Nate Robinson and Reggie Miller, as well as former WNBA star Lisa Leslie - dropped back in June, with Gordon playing Casper Jones, a talented but arrogant streetballer who betrays his team to go join their rivals.
While Kyrie must have gotten himself even more fans with his starring role as the titular Uncle Drew, Gordon's character left him with a few haters, and understandably so.
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“[I got] a little bit [of blowback], people are like: ‘Man, I don’t really like AG no more after being Casper,’” the Magic star said in an interview with NBA Daily “Who doesn’t like him anymore?”
“I worried that the casting thing was gonna mess with the contracts — but my agent assured me it wasn’t going to do nothing, plus it ended up looking good.”
A few months earlier, however, the player had reveled in his newfound stardom.
“It was definitely an experience that I’ve never felt before, a feeling that I’ve never felt before: being on a big screen in front of hundreds of people and a lot of your peers and wondering how people are going to react to you,” he said after attending the film's premiere in New York back in June.
“It was a great feeling. It was a really, really nice feeling.”
The 23-year-old averaged 17.6 points and 7.9 rebounds for Orlando last season, his best campaign on a personal front since getting drafted as the fourth overall pick in 2014. Gordon signed a new, four-year deal with the Magic this summer and will earn a cool $76 million over the course of the next four seasons.
“It’s like enlightenment,” he said, acknowledging the fact that he will have an even greater responsibility on his shoulders having accepted the lucrative, new deal heading into the upcoming term.
“So you get the money, you got the weight on your shoulders, you hear the contract, you sign your contract, you take that weight off. But then you wait two weeks and then you gotta pick that weight back up and put it back on your shoulders so you can come and keep growing with the Magic.
“And win with the Magic and take what they’ve given you and make sure everyone knows why you got that.”
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