Things got heated as the Toronto Raptors looked to end their 11-game losing streak to the Chicago Bulls on Tuesday.
A chippy, physical game got turned up a notch as Serge Ibaka and Robin Lopez began jawing at each other after a play, then got close, then began full-on attempting punches. As both teams entered the fray, P.J. Tucker may have saved Ibaka a long punishment and Lopez a couple teeth, pushing Ibaka like a tackling sled back past half court to try to defuse the situation. (DeMar DeRozan was tyring to play peacemaker, too, and looked to narrowly avoid injury.)
Lopez and Ibaka throwing punches pic.twitter.com/CMe51Fe8Bq
— Stephen Noh (@StephNoh) March 22, 2017
Bulls' Robin Lopez and Raptors' Serge Ibaka exchange punches, get ejected (all angles) pic.twitter.com/uxVm321tPc
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) March 22, 2017
Tucker’s efforts were too little, too late. Both Ibaka and Lopez were thrown out for “fighting technical fouls,” and Nikola Mirotic and Jamaal Magloire received technicals as well.
Nikola Mirotic getting into with a Raptors assistant coach pic.twitter.com/DD5h1tvn1M
— Chicago Sports News (@ChiSportUpdates) March 22, 2017
Lopez and Ibaka are likely to get a call from the league office sometime soon about subsequent discipline. The punches, by the way, landed, so this isn’t going to be a light kind of “slap on the wrist for talking smack” situation from the league’s perspective. There isn’t a ton of recent precedent on incidents exactly like this, but they’re at least getting one game and a fine, perhaps even a multi-game ban.
What’s also worrisome is that Ibaka was favoring his wrist for a while as officials sorted out the punishments.
More about the potential fallout later, as there’s a game to finish, and the league probably won’t rule on Ibaka and Lopez until Wednesday or Thursday.
