Austin Rivers = Jerryd Bayless. Both thought they were hot shit as rookies and couldn't understand why it wasn't obvious to everyone.
Houston's R.J. Hunter, from our 2017 Summer League (remember the white SG who always hunched his shoulders and looked 6-2 when he was listed at 6-5?) played 1 minute and now has a season PER of 44.33. Look before it's gone. http://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/2983727/rj-hunter
Harden and Rivers didn't play. Rivers was saying things from the stands and the Rockets couldn't get to him. So after the game they took the secret passageway between locker rooms. The only Rocket who knew the Clippers lockerroom area was former Clipper Chris Paul, so he's not as innocent as he seems, staying out of the fight. https://sports.yahoo.com/reports-rockets-players-confront-clippers-070803983.html
There won't be but there should be major suspensions for all those Rocket players involved in going into the Clippers locker room especially Chris Paul. He is the president of the players association and the one that told them how to get there through a back tunnel. That is not acceptable at all from someone who is supposed to be the leader of the players. I would go so far as to say that he should have that title stripped. But he won't and at most they will all get a one game suspension, the same you get for walking on the court during a fight. Ridiculous. The NBA is on a bit of a slippery slope right now.
Strenuus, please merge this with the Around The NBA thread. It's about two garbage teams that aren't the Blazers.
True, but it deserves a catchy title. Something kind of Muhammad Ali-esque like, “Mega-tools Who Be Fools.”
Socker in the Locker? I suspect that Silver, when he’s dishing out fines, will be calling them Rockets with Deep Pockets.
Because the Rockets used a “back corridor” connecting the locker rooms—described elsewhere as involving a “secret passage”—we can probably surmise that it was Paul who alerted them to its existence. (This is exactlyhow the Persians took Thermopylae.) And because this Woj report is filled with hilarious detail, we know that “Ariza was described as the first one through the door, with Paul lingering in the back.” There was no donnybrook in the locker room, nor fisticuffs, nor even much of a rhubarb. “It was just a lot of barking,” one witness told the L.A. Times. Or as one Clipper told ESPN, quite descriptively, “It was classic NBA. None of these guys were going to fight.” The Rockets reportedly stood in the entranceway yelling at the Clippers, who dared their encroachers to come further into the room. The Rockets did not, and security quickly forced them out of the room. Then, according to some reports, the police were called. Here is the appropriate reaction to all of this: This was Chris Paul’s first game back against his old team, and Blake Griffin appeared particularly inspired, putting up 29, 10, and 6, and apparently never once shutting up about it. He got into it with Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni too, who he accused of illegally wandering out onto the court. So on one sequence, getting back on defense, Griffin pointed at D’Antoni then made contact with him. That led to D’Antoni cursing out Griffin. When asked what they said to one another, D’Antoni said, “You mean after he hit me? I didn’t appreciate it.” But at least Griffin was on the court for his trash talk. The Rockets were also enraged by Austin Rivers, who is out with an ankle injury and was wearing a suit and who, according to ESPN, “had been especially belligerent from the bench.” Honestly, it’s the primaries in this beef that make everything particularly funny. Rivers didn’t play but was the loudest mouth there. Harden, out with a hamstring injury since New Year’s Eve, felt healthy enough to try to besiege the home locker room. Gerald Green became a Rocket exactly 19 days ago, and here he is, joining the war party. The whole thing ended just about as perfectly as it could have: Rockets center Clint Capela walked down the main corridor and banged on the front entrance to the Clippers’ locker room, league sources said. Soon, a Clippers staff member opened the door and looked up to see Capela, a formidable 6-foot-10 figure standing in the doorway. She shut the door in Capela’s face. For a few moments, Capela stood there, unsure how to proceed. Before long, Capela walked back to the Rockets’ locker room, showered and headed for the bus with the rest of the Rockets. https://deadspin.com/the-rockets-hilariously-tried-to-storm-the-clippers-loc-1822112226
