Sports shorts Rockets’ Ariza, Green suspended two games

Trevor Ariza said nothing happened. The NBA strongly disagreed.

Ariza and Gerald Green will both be suspended for Houston’s next two games, with the NBA coming down hard on both players Wednesday for what the league said was their “hostile, verbal altercation” in the Los Angeles Clippers’ locker room earlier this week.

No other players were disciplined, including Rockets guards James Harden and Chris Paul both of whom left the Houston locker room with hopes of defusing the situation, the league said.

“You guys had a lot of different stories about what happened, none of them which were true,” Ariza said Wednesday in Houston, before the league announced the suspensions. “Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion. The people that were there know exactly what happened and know exactly what did not happen.” So what happened? “Nothing happened,” Ariza said. “That’s what happened. Nothing.” Later, though, he conceded “obviously, that’s not all that happened.”

Whatever it was that actually happened, however, remains a mystery of sorts. The final minutes of the game which was Paul’s first time facing the Clippers in Los Angeles as an opponent since the trade that sent him to Houston over the summer were marred by some on-court feistiness, including the Clippers’ Blake Griffin appearing to exchange words with Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni.

Griffin and Ariza were also ejected with 1:03 remaining from a game that had five technical fouls, and then the postgame incident.

“It’s over,” Paul said. “It’s in the past. We’re moving on.”

Kawhi Leonard is headed back to the sidelines, and he’ll stay there until his leg is ready.

The San Antonio Spurs decided to shut their All-Star forward down Wednesday, saying Leonard would be out indefinitely as he continues his recovery from injury.

“We didn’t feel he was ready. His confidence level wasn’t there, so we decided to give it some more time,” coach Gregg Popovich said before the Spurs played the Brooklyn Nets.

Leonard has played in just nine games after missing the beginning of the season because of right quadriceps tendinopathy. He also was sidelined briefly because of a shoulder injury.

Popovich said Leonard hadn’t sustained another injury, but also didn’t seem confident in his ability to play at the level that had him finishing third in the voting for NBA MVP last season.

“He didn’t reinjure it or anything but he was having pain, but not right after games, but maybe the next day at noon or that kind of thing and so the pain wasn’t dissipating,” Popovich said.