Tempers were flaring during the Los Angeles Lakers’ game against the Phoenix Suns on Friday night, although it wasn’t between the two teams.
Towards the end of the second quarter with the Lakers in a stretch of poor play, Anthony Davis and Dwight Howard got into a scuffle on the bench. Both players downplayed the incident after the game despite shoving each other, and it seems like they are ready to move forward and be better in the future.
That wasn’t the only incident on the night though as Rajon Rondo also exchanged some words with a fan sitting courtside late in the game, leading to the fan being ejected by security.
Speaking of the incident after practice on Saturday, Rondo would not disclose what was said, but stated he just wanted the fan out of the arena.
“There was an exchange of words and I just wanted to get the guy out of the game,” Rondo said.
“It doesn’t really matter what I said, he didn’t threaten me and I didn’t threaten him, there was an exchange of words and got him out of the game.”
Rondo took a ton of criticism after the game as during the argument, it looked like he pointed a finger gun at the fan, who responded by hitting Rondo’s hand down, which led to the ejection.
Rondo went on to clarify that he wasn’t trying to point a finger gun at the fan though, rather was just pointing out which fan it was to the security guards.
“I was pointing at the guy,” Rondo said.
Here is complete video of the incident, via Ball Is Life:
Full video of a fan getting ejected after slapping Rondo's fingers out of his face. pic.twitter.com/4BLs8t4oHS
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) October 23, 2021
It’s clear that frustrations were high on the Lakers bench as they were in the midst of a blowout loss to the Suns to fall to 0-2 on the season. LeBron James made sure to note after the game that the Lakers need to do a better job of controlling their frustrations, so hopefully the team can learn from these incidents to avoid it happening again.
