Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
The enforcer
James Johnson fires up the resurgent Heat.
MIAMI — The irony was not lost on forward James Johnson as he was being restrained from his moment of fury, about to be escorted to the Miami Heat locker room after teammate Hassan Whiteside was flattened by the most flagrant of fouls.
As Johnson, in all his blackbelt fury (and he is one), attempted to go all-in against Atlanta Hawks antagonist Tau-- rean, Prince, Heat forward Udonis Haslem and assistant coach Juwan Howard were offering pushback of their own.
“Him and Juwan Howard were trying to do a great job calming me down,” Johnson said in the locker room after his early exit in what would turn into a 116-93 rout Wednesday night of the Hawks. “And it’s funny, because I’ve been in the league for eight years, so I got to play with both of ’em, again both of ’em, and they wouldn’t have calmed down.”
The team play has transcended the box score, with the winning streak now nine heading into Saturday’s game against the Philadelphia 76ers at the conclusion of this four-
game homestand. So has the team pay. “I got James’ fine,” Whiteside said.
Wednesday’s total came to $7,000, pending possible follow-up action by the league office.
Ejections are penalized at $2,000 for a player’s first of the season, rising by $2,000 for each subsequent ejection. Johnson already had been dismissed from a Dec. 3 road loss to the Portland Trail Blazers with two technical fouls, making this his second of the season. The technical foul that accompanied the ejection will cost $3,000. Each of a player’s first five technical fouls are fined at $2,000 each, with Nos. 6-10 fined at $3,000. Wednesday’s was Johnson’s sixth of the season. Heat guard Dion Waiters also was assessed a technical foul during the skirmish.
“It was just instincts,” Johnson said of emoting and nearly attacking in the wake of Whiteside being flung back first to the court, “instincts of a brother, instincts of a teammate who cares.
“We’re building something here, and he was being aggressive and physical. Whiteside went down and that’s all I remember after that.”
Whiteside also was left a bit fuzzy, speaking of a “headache” in the wake of the incident.
“It hurt a lot,” he said. “I hit my head, too. It was a dangerous play.”
He was able to play on, closing with 18 points and 18 rebounds.
“The guy, he just wrapped me up. It was a dangerous play,” Whiteside said. “Fake tough guy. That’s what happened.”
Because the foul came from behind, Whiteside was unaware of the culprit.
“I was asking everybody, ‘Who did it?’ ” he said. “They said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Whiteside.’ Because they know how I get. I found who did it. The kid with the dreads. Now I know.”
The Heat have one more game remaining in the four-game season series, Feb. 24 at Philips Arena.
With Johnson, there was nothing fake about the reaction, just as it has been for more than a decade with Haslem as the Heat’s resident enforcer, and how it was when Howard was offering his unique brand of talking points to Lance Stephenson during the heights of the Heat’s Big Three rivalry with the Indiana Pacers.
“I’m just wired like that,” Johnson said of his response. “I don’t think I can beat everybody in the world up. I’ll take my chances in that kind of situation.
“I really hold myself in check because of my background.”
Since Whiteside’s emergence, there has been thought that the best way to attack the Heat center is to attack. That’s what impressed coach Erik Spoelstra, that Whiteside did not go all James Johnson himself.
“It was unfortunate that it turned into that,” Spoelstra said of the incident. “I thought he responded great. He cooled himself off. He was hot when he first got up. But he cooled himself off, gathered himself emotionally in the timeout, and then just proceeded to control what he could control, and that’s beating them on the basketball court.”
As for Johnson, Spoelstra smiled, especially when it came to Johnson being restrained by Howard and Haslem,
“I would rather him not get ejected,” he said. “If U.D. or Juwan Howard were out there telling him, ‘What the heck are you doing? You can’t do that,’ then they were talking out of both sides of their mouth.”
The technical was the third of the season for Waiters, meaning a $2,000 fine.
“I take care of my teammate,” he said. “That’s the first thing that clicks in my head. That mentality, you’ve got to protect brother, that’s all I was doing. That’s how I reacted. I couldn’t think. That’s a natural thing for me. That’s how I react.”
Prince, a rookie selected out of Baylor in last June’s first round, said in the Hawks locker room that his intent was not the ultimate result.
“I don’t play the game of basketball to try to hurt somebody,” he said. “I was just doing what my coach told me to do, and that was to put Whiteside on the line and not give him anything easy. That’s what I did.”
But even Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer acknowledged it was a bit over the top.
“It did not look good,” Budenholzer said. “Unfortunately for Hassan Whiteside, it’s a tough, bad fall. I think Taurean is just trying to wrap him up and not let him get an and-one.
“It ended up looking [bad], and probably deservedly so, but there was nothing intentional, dirty or ugly. We hope Whiteside is fine. Taurean, wrapping up a guy is important and hopefully he can do it without that kind of fall.”
The Heat’s fight was not lost on the Hawks.
“You can see why they have won nine games in a row now,” Budenholzer said. “On both ends of the court, their activity, their aggressiveness, I’m just really impressed with their players, with their coaching staff and everything they are doing.”
“We’re building something here, and he was being aggressive and physical. Whiteside went down and that’s all I remember after that.” James Johnson on Prince’s foul of Whiteside