WARMUP A HEATED SESSION

February 4, 1995

Xavier McDaniel likes to think he has to make his case for playing time in practice. Yesterday he almost made a case for prison time as well.

McDaniel was at his animated best -- as were several of his teammates -- during a loud and intense workout. McDaniel's main target was Celtics assistant coach Dennis Johnson, with whom he verbally sparred over lack of foul calls.

"If you guys want to bitch," Johnson told a tangled McDaniel and Dino Radja, "bitch at each other. Don't bitch at me." When McDaniel refused to get back on defense and complained he was held three times without a call, assistant coach Don Casey looked at him and said, "So what?"

At one point, just before an inbounds play, Johnson and McDaniel engaged in X-rated repartee that brought back memories of the schoolyard. Each man challenged the other to repeat the offending words next to him. Each declined.

That was indicative of the tenor. Sherman Douglas and David Wesley traded a few blows before Pervis Ellison separated them. And Ellison, normally a stoic type, was also vocal.

"We haven't had a practice like this in quite a while," Dee Brown said. "Sherman. X. Those guys get pumped up by talking. Everyone was intense. Even Pervis. Usually, he never says anything. But he was out there yelling, too, so you know it had to be different."

Asked about the scrape with Wesley, Douglas shrugged it off. "We're all frustrated," he said. "I don't know what we need."

"Those things happen," Brown said. "There's just a little mental tension and then something happens. That's all. It's over with."

He was asked why the same attitude didn't carry over into games.

"It's expensive," he said, referring to the NBA crackdown on fighting and trash talking. "They put a lot of restraints on talking. But here no one is trying to hurt anyone. You get caught up in the heat of the battle, that's all."