Ibaka benched after incident with team staff

TORONTO The fiery temper that makes Serge Ibaka the basketball player he is earned him a team-imposed one-game suspension for Friday’s game with the Atlanta Hawks.

In a press release issued late Friday afternoon, the team announced Ibaka would serve a one-game suspension after a violation of team rules. An altercation between Ibaka and an unnamed Raptors staff member after Wednesday’s game in Oklahoma City resulted in the suspension.

“Both parties have apologized,” team president Masai Ujiri said in the release. “We’ve discussed this internally as a team, and we won’t be discussing it any further. Now we’re focused on moving forward together, and we look forward to having Serge back in the lineup.”

Head coach Dwane Casey echoed his team president.

“Masai’s statement is self-explanatory. It’s a disagreement, altercation, whatever you wanna call it. It’s already been resolved,” Casey said.

“We met about it, both guys apologized to each other. And those things happen in the course of living together for six to eight months. We have limits in our culture, how we wanna live within our team, how we wanna treat people and it went over the limit and we’ve handled it. I’m not going to go in any detail about it.”

Ibaka is playing the best basketball since he became a member of the Raptors. He is averaging 16.8 points and 6.7 rebounds a night in December.

PAUL RETURNS

In Washington, Rockets guard Chris Paul was scheduled to play Friday against the Wizards after missing three games with a strained groin, coach Mike D’Antoni said.

The Rockets, who have lost four straight, are 15-1 with Paul in the lineup and 10-7 without him.