According to Austin Rivers, the whole Clippers-Rockets postgame fiasco could have been avoided if Trevor Ariza had just heard what he said when Ariza came within earshot to the Clippers bench after taking what Rivers said was a cheap shot at Blake Griffin.
Rivers said he yelled out, “Do it! Do it!” to Ariza and that both cameras and Ariza would verify that. But at the time, “he didn’t hear what I said. [So Ariza] turned around and said, ‘What the f— did you just say to me?’ Then he called me some stuff. And I’m a grown man. I’m not going to take nothing from nobody, just like he wouldn’t. So I took offense to it. And he didn’t know what I said. So after the game he came in the locker room and his whole thing was, ‘What’d he say? What’d he say?’”
More from USA TODAY Sports’ Jeff Zillgitt:
Through an investigation that included more than 20 interviews by the NBA’s basketball operations department, including surveillance from video cameras, the league determined that Ariza and Green entered the Clippers’ locker room and “engaged in a hostile, verbal altercation with several Clippers players. The league’s investigation further concluded that Rockets players, James Harden and Chris Paul, followed Ariza and Green into the corridor outside the locker room in an effort to defuse the situation, and accordingly, discipline is not warranted.”
All this commotion really makes the NBA much more exciting. Just imagine if these guys cared all season long, rather than just the playoffs. LOL.
