The Rockets and Clippers had a locker room fight. Here’s everything that went down.

Thursday update: The complete story about the locker room “fight” has come out, and the facts are a little bit different from what we all believed on Monday. Here’s the full story.

Late Monday evening, the Houston Rockets and the Los Angeles Clippers finished a basketball game. Soon afterward began the evening’s real entertainment.

Several Rockets players, upset at Austin Rivers and Blake Griffin, approached the Clippers’ locker room with intentions of confronting them, with varying degrees of success, depending on which report you believe.

The postgame fiasco reached Twitter’s flash point in moments, igniting the social media app with reactions, jokes, and occasional reports from what actually went down in the locker room. Look, if you missed those couple of hours, I’m sorry. It was the closest thing we’ve seen to sheer Twitter pandemonium since the DeAndre Jordan emoji “hostage situation.” It was magical.

Here’s what happened, as best as we currently understand it.

After six seasons in Los Angeles, Chris Paul made damn sure that his return was memorable. All the usual homecoming moments were present early on — some cheers, some boos, a video tribute — but that quickly gave way to absurdity with 3:42 left in the game. To summarize:

It apparently happened on this play:

He mentioned it in vague terms after the game:

You can see a great look at it here:

Rivers, you may note, is in street clothes and wearing a walking boot due to an Achilles strain:

That sums it up.

This has been long since glossed over, but the first word from the NBA locker room was that James Harden had tried to calm down an angry Paul and that the two had gotten into a fight. That was not what actually happened:

Somehow, this is about the 17th most ridiculous thing that transpired this evening.

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Ariza was the foremost aggressor, bringing teammates Paul, Harden, and Gerald Green with him. (It appears that Tarik Black was not involved, despite one initial report claiming he came with that group.) From ESPN:

Stunned Clippers players, celebrating a 113-102 victory, leaped to their feet upon the realization that four seething Rockets players had come calling for them, sources told ESPN.

For a few fleeting moments, several Clippers dared the Rockets to come farther into the room, sources said. Security and team officials soon converged on the Rockets, pushing them out the door and back toward the visiting locker room, sources said. Ariza was described as the first one through the door, with Paul lingering in the back, witnesses told ESPN.

If Ariza physically entered the locker room, it was brief, and regardless, the encounter was purely verbal. But it makes sense — Ariza pulled a nearly identical move last season with Houston.

There has never been a news story created for Inside the NBA quickly like this one. Look, briefly imagine how you think Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley might react to a story like this one. Yes, you’re right. What’s in your head right now is spot on.

To quote Barkley:

“Police! This is Blake Griffin. I’m at the Staples Center. I am 6’10, 220 and one of the most powerful players in the NBA. Chris Paul is trying to kick my ass. Get down here quick!”

Sure, factual reporting revealed that there was nothing “secret” about the tunnel that connected the two locker rooms underneath Staples Center, but Twitter quickly latched onto a secret-tunnel joke and didn’t let up. (Wojnarowski’s typo, “backstory,” should read “back door.”)

The mental image of Paul, a Clipper for six seasons, knowing a secret entrance to his old team’s locker room, and then leading his new team on an excursion through said entrance to confront his former coach’s son for talking shit, is just too beautiful to pass up.

Twitter users were interested before, but this elevated the entire situation to something else entirely.

And then it got even better, because ...

The Rockets’ center reportedly knocked on the front door of the Clippers’ locker room while Houston’s other group, the one with Paul and Ariza, flanked them. Paul’s such a floor general that he literally drew up a war plan for Houston’s charge on Los Angeles.

Reportedly, a Clippers staff member opened the door, saw it was Capela, and shut it on him. Capela “lingered around” before returning to the Rockets’ locker room, unsure what else to do.

It was Paul in a postgame interview, where he said Los Angeles should play through their go-to guy, Lou Williams.

“They got Lou Will. Lou Will is the guy, you know what I mean? That’s the go-to guy. That’s the guy they should play through and stuff like that. He’s having a great year, and he’s tough. He’s tough, man.”

There was purposefully no mention of Griffin, and that nicely sums up the quickly deteriorated relationship between the two former co-stars.

At midnight local time, he shot off this tweet:

Griffin was ejected, but he won’t be suspended for this nonsense, not unless the NBA’s investigation turns up something else. It seems likely that Ariza at least, and possibly Harden, Paul, and Green, will be banned for a game or two. They were the ones who attempted to enter another team’s locker room with the sole purpose of instigating, which is simply unheard of.

Other members of both teams got off similar tweets:

We assume Morey is making a multi-layered reference to a famous Mark Twain quote.

The two teams play again on Feb. 28 and March 15, and they are well aware of that:

We should also note that Los Angeles and Houston would currently be a first-round series — Houston with the No. 2 seed, and the Clippers climbing to No. 7.

Please let us have that.