National Post (National Edition)
NBA suspends Ibaka 3 games for fight
Raps centre forced to sit for third time in as many seasons
C L E V E L A N D • Long gone are the days of NBA basket brawls, but Serge Ibaka’s track record suggests he wouldn’t have been out of place in those more physical eras.
Ibaka, the Toronto Raptors big man, got fed up with Cleveland Cavaliers forward Marquese Chriss here on Monday night during a blowout Raptors 126-101 loss and ended up in his third fight in three seasons with the Raptors.
On Tuesday the NBA suspended Ibaka three games without pay.
The NBA said Ibaka’s suspension was based on instigating the fight, throwing a punch at Chriss and his prior history of fighting during NBA games. He will forfeit US$447,000 in salary.
Chriss received a one-game suspension for throwing a punch at Ibaka.
After the two got tangled up late in the third quarter, Ibaka hit the deck. Chriss stood over him and said something Ibaka strongly disagreed with.
The veteran centre got up and grabbed Chriss by the neck and shoved him up against the basket stanchion before just missing with a massive right-handed punch toward Chriss’s face.
The players were then separated and ejected.
“I just saw some stuff building up. Some frustration,” Danny Green told Postmedia after the game.
“Not just with him, but through- out the game with a lot of guys. Some things not going our way. And I saw them get tangled up earlier in the game and I guess it kind of escalated. An altercation happened very fast.”
Raptors centre Marc Gasol said “it’s an emotional game and sometimes emotions get the best of you. I don’t know what happened exactly on the play so it’s hard to comment, but for Serge to react like that, something had to be said that was not right.
“Contact sports, and when you say the wrong things, emotions build up and sometimes it explodes.”
Ibaka declined to comment, but confirmed post-game through the team that Chriss said something to set him off.
“It’s just the competitive nature of the game,” said Raptors superstar Kawhi Leonard.
One-time Raptor Charles Oakley and his then New York Knicks teammates weren’t afraid to get physical in the 1990s, nor were the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons before them, but the NBA cracked down on fighting, upping fines and suspensions, so they don’t happen that much anymore.
Except, it seems, Ibaka missed the memo.
Last season he perhaps unwisely threw at ex-raptor James Johnson, who plays for the Miami Heat and is a mixed martial arts champion with multiple black belts. Ibaka was suspended for a game for that one.
The year before, Ibaka’s first after being traded to the Raptors from Orlando, he retaliated against Chicago centre Robin Lopez in a spirited tussle that also earned him a one-game ban.