Deng motivated by "hate"

During the spring of 2009 while Luol Deng was sidelined, he was caught off guard by some of the comments that the fans and media had made about the severity of the stress fracture in his right leg.

"Sitting there and reading everything in the papers and from the fans … that was the craziest thing I've ever had to go through," Deng said Friday. "Before that, I kind of felt like I was loved by everyone. I had never experienced that — if you want to call it hate, or whatever it was. (But) I think it really helped me to bounce back, knowing how things work."