Late game fireworks erupted as Thunder and Pelicans players clashed, overshadowing a decisive Oklahoma City victory. Tempers flared beyond the final buzzer.
The Oklahoma City Thunder snapped their two game losing streak on Tuesday night with a 104-95 win over the New Orleans Pelicans. But nobody on television, radio, podcasts or social media is analyzing the actual basketball played in The Paycom Center between the first place and last place teams in the Western Conference.
That's because the ball took a backseat to the brawl that broke out. Okay, that's a bit hyperbolic but it's what one would think if you only paid attention to all the viral video clips and captions.
Towards the end of the game, Jaylin Williams and Saddiq Bey had a couple of skirmishes. Those ultimately led to Williams, of course, smiling as Bey stewed. That was just the undercard, though.
The main event came as the final buzzer sounded and Lu Dort and former Oklahoma Sooner Jeremiah Fears got into a heated kerfuffle. Some words were exchanged, jerseys were grabbed, teammates and staff rushed in to separate them, Loud City roared in approval of Dort and the in-arena PA announcer finally exclaimed "Thunder win!" to put a bow on the commotion.
Social media was buzzing afterwards with speculation about what was said and how it all went down. Mark Daigneault and the Thunder players were asked about the squabbles in the postgame presser.
"Two things on that. The first one is, I thought good guys, good crew, but I thought they lost control of the game in the final minutes," Daigneault said when asked about the Fears and Dort dust up. "I thought, you know, that altercation at the end started well before that with the Bey-JWill situation. I thought they could have managed that cleaner. And then the second thing is, I think that's a foul on Dort. And if it was, they should put a whistle on that play. Regardless of the score and the time, because if they do that, everybody stops playing and you can legislate the situation as you normally would. But because they didn't put a whistle on it, it's the end of the game, they can do nothing about it, and you end up with that situation."
"Nah man, it's just two teams wanting to win a basketball game," Isaiah Joe answered when asked if he was surprised the game got chippy. "It's competitive out there."
"Yeah, I wasn't too sure what happened," Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said of the end of game tussle. "I had heard like them going back and forth, that's what I mean, the last two free throws. But I wasn't sure what happened. And then I turned around and they were face to face. I'm sure it was nothing crazy though. Typical basketball scuffle."