Tempers flare
Sideshows proving as entertaining as on-court action
Basketball is a beautiful sport, played by athletic marvels but, sometimes, the sideshow can be nearly as entertaining as the on-court action.
There’s the basketball-never-sleeps off-season, filled with edge-of-yourseat hot stove hilarity and breaking trade and free agency news. The referees and players aren’t getting along lately, and neither are the players with their counterparts!
DeMar DeRozan was fined $15,000 on Tuesday for saying his Raptors were playing five-on-eight in a recent game, Carmelo Anthony said he was “done with those guys,” referring to officials after they ejected Russell Westbrook.
Meanwhile, there’s some old-school intensity. It’s not quite Robert Parish bashing Bill Laimbeer to the floor with a shot to the head and not even getting ejected, 1980s style, but tempers are flaring more often early in 2018 than we are used to.
On Martin Luther King Day, of all days, Kyle Lowry and Ben Simmons got into it repeatedly in Philadelphia and, later that night, the Houston Rockets were enraged enough (reportedly by the antics of Blake Griffin and Austin Rivers) to bust into the Clippers’ locker room in Los Angeles.
Griffin made contact with Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni (because Griffin wasn’t happy about D’Antoni constantly leaving the coaching box and getting too close to the action). There is no love lost between Chris Paul and his former teammates. Rivers loudly shouted words at various Houston players late in the game, even though he was in street clothes and not playing.
It started with an uncalled goaltending, which agitated the Rockets, who would eventually lose. After that, Griffin bumped D’Antoni and the coach screamed at Griffin in response. From there, Ariza ripped Griffin’s tights, Griffin bowled over Paul and so on. Much more interesting, though, was what came later following Griffin’s and Ariza’s ejections: Clint Capela knocked on the front door of the Los Angeles locker room while Paul, Ariza and Gerald Green headed for a back entrance. Sports Illustrated reported that Ariza and Rivers got into a shouting match while Ariza’s teammates held him back.
Various players would later take shots at their post-game media availabilities.
Earlier, Lowry had accepted a challenge from Simmons to meet him in the back, though Lowry said Tuesday that Simmons did not show up.