Tim BontempsESPN
NEW YORK — Philadelphia 76ers schoolmaster Document Rivers gave an impassioned pronunciation Friday in protection of Joel Embiid‘s kick at Brooklyn Nets heart Nic Claxton, pronouncing the NBA must do something positive about groups seeking to goad famous person gamers into retaliatory movements all through video games.
“I’m going to mention this, and I most definitely shouldn’t: I didn’t suppose Draymond [Green] will have to had been suspended,” Rivers stated Friday, regarding the Golden State Warriors famous person’s suspension for stomping at the Sacramento Kings‘ Domantas Sabonis. “And I think the league is setting up a very dangerous precedent right now, and this is not me campaigning, and I’m dead serious.
“… If we’re going to begin punishing the retaliators, and now not the instigators, after we’ve were given a disease on this league.”
Embiid kicked at Claxton after the Nets center stood over him less than three minutes into Game 3 on Thursday, with Embiid being hit with a flagrant foul on the play and Claxton getting a technical foul for taunting his opponent.
Claxton would later get a second technical — and with it an ejection — for taunting Embiid after a dunk early in the fourth quarter.
Philadelphia’s other superstar, James Harden, was hit with a flagrant foul 2, which comes with an automatic ejection, for a hit to the groin area of Nets forward Royce O’Neale late in the third quarter.
A league spokesperson told ESPN on Friday that both Harden’s and Embiid’s fouls will stand as called, and that neither will receive any further discipline from the league. As a result, Harden has two flagrant foul points moving forward, and Embiid has one. When a player accumulates four flagrant foul points in the playoffs, it results in an automatic one-game suspension.
That, however, will serve as only so much of a deterrent in the eyes of Rivers, who said that players like Embiid need to be protected from being repeatedly targeted by opponents throughout games.
“I’ve been a participant, and it is a gamers’ league, and I’m 100% pro-player,” Rivers said. “I feel gamers will have to play games in video games. We communicate all era about enthusiasts now not being satisfied about guys now not enjoying, and now we’re taking guys out of the playoffs. I don’t imagine within the generation stuff both. They remove your entire techs on the finish of the season, proper? And also you get started over. Upcoming you will have to get started over with that stuff, too. … Draymond Inexperienced stepped on a man’s chest as a result of he used to be preserving his underpinning. The instigator used to be preserving his underpinning.
“If I’m at a park, and I’m going to make this point, and you stood over me? We’re going to have a problem. I didn’t grow up in the sticks-and-stones era, I grew up in the break-the-bones era, so it’s a little different. Having said that, these guys know they can do it because most likely you can’t do anything. I’m not picking on Claxton, but I don’t think at a park he’s standing over Joel. But when you’ve got the ref and everybody else there, you know nothing is going to happen.”
Nonetheless, even Rivers admitted there used to be a possible case to be made for ejecting Embiid. Rivers used to be unequivocal, on the other hand, in pointing out he believed Harden used to be wronged together with his flagrant 2 and ejection.
“James’ thing is a joke,” Rivers stated. “… The first thing with James is, I’m still looking for a foul. To be thrown out? The problem I have with James being thrown out is there’s three officials, and at least one to two guys in Secaucus [at the NBA’s replay center in New Jersey], and that’s what they came up with? I just can’t understand that one.
“Joel’s can have went both approach, now that I’ve watched it. It in point of fact may just’ve. I feel he kicked him within the leg, if truth be told. I don’t know if that’s the place he used to be focused on or now not. However don’t arise over him. We’ve those unwritten laws in hockey. … We want to build some in our league, and one in all them is you don’t straddle a man and arise over him. You simply don’t. You don’t do this.”
Rivers made it clear that the 76ers will have to better handle Brooklyn’s physicality.
“We need to be in a position,” Rivers said. “We without a doubt need to be in a position and maintain that stuff higher as a bunch and we simply have to understand. Joel is most definitely the primary man, but it surely used to be all recreation if you happen to observe it. They have been bumping him, they have been hitting him, they have been preserving him, and it used to be allowed. The lesser guys, they by no means get that. Nobody is doing that to them. So we’re asking our stars to show their heads a complete bunch greater than they are able to from time to time.
“So it’s a tough one for the league. I think they’re in a tough spot. But I do think if you start it and you’re going to suspend Draymond, you should suspend the other guy, too. You created it? You go, too. So if you want to do that, you’re putting yourself in a chance if the guy does respond, where you can go, too. I think we have to come up with something like that.”
Controversy apart, Philadelphia claimed a commanding 3-0 manage within the best-of-seven layout and is in place to brush Brooklyn out of the playoffs with any other win in Recreation 4 on Saturday.
“We haven’t accomplished anything,” Rivers stated. “We haven’t won the series, so we’ve done nothing. We’ve got to be ready to play. Nothing’s going to be easy, and it’s not going to be gifted to us.”
