The NBA is the reigning champion of pettiness, and yesterday only solidified that reputation. Monday gave us a full slate of 11 games, four of which had some pettiness or a kerfuffle. It’s beautiful. It’s perfection. The day will go down in bizarre infamy.
The NBA reached peak pettiness with ejections, faulty water, and secret missions
Things got WEIRD on Monday.
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
It began in Philadelphia...
The sun was still up when the first major beef of the day happened, between Kyle Lowry and Ben Simmons. The two were jawing back and forth at the close of Raptors vs. Sixers, and then reportedly things spilled into the hallway when both players were ejected:
Both players deny fighting outside the locker rooms, but the beef was on display:
Then Russ got ejected
The Thunder were up by 11 with under three minutes left when Westbrook flopped to the ground and got called for a travel. He then blew up at the refs and got ejected:
The Warriors had hot water problems
THIS is some real pettiness. Sure, one might believe this was a coincidence and that somehow the hot water magically disappeared when the Warriors came to play. But is anyone really buying that?
The pettiness between the Warriors and Cavs is well-chronicled, and cutting the hot water off is just plain mean — even if both sides love playing up this rivalry for the drama:
Then “it” happened ...
If you’ve been living under a sports rock, you might not have heard about the late-night caper the Rockets pulled off. There’s no footage of this, so let me paint you a quick word picture:
The Rockets got angry at Austin Rivers and Blake Griffin during their game against the Clippers. When the game was done, they wanted to confront the pair. Houston center Clint Capela banged on the Clippers’ locker room door, while Chris Paul led a small squadron through a back passage in the Staples Center that he learned of from playing there to infiltrate the Clippers locker room along with James Harden and Trevor Ariza so they could yell at Rivers and Griffin.
All the Inside The NBA crew could do was laugh about it. Especially after it emerged that the police were called:
Eleven games; four moments of extreme pettiness. That’s a petty percentage on the day of 36.3. No sport with that many games could hope to come close to the weirdness of the NBA on Monday, Jan. 15, 2018. What a time to be alive.
