The Denver Nuggets are fighting for their playoff lives against the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday, but at the end of the second quarter, that fight became literal. The Nuggets and Clippers played a chippy first half withDenver trying to even the first-round series at 2-2, and that tension finally boiled over right before the teams went back to the locker room for halftime.
With around six seconds remaining in the second quarter, Christian Braun committed a strategic foul on James Harden. Denver had a foul to give, so the idea was to force the Clippers to inbound the ball again and try to get a shot off against a set defense. Harden, for reasons that are unclear, was not happy with what Braun did.
The two were quickly in each other’s faces. Nikola Jokić and Ivica Zubac soon joined the skirmish, and eventually, both teams were going at it. That included Harden and Aaron Gordon shoving one another, and Gordon needing to get pulled out of the scrum.
Thankfully, nobody was ejected for what happened. Instead, technical fouls were awarded to Harden, Norm Powell, Kris Dunn, Gordon, Braun and Jokić. No free throws were attempted because the six technicals offset, and the game resumed from there with the Clippers failing to score at the end of the half and the Nuggets bringing a 50-48 lead into the locker rooms.
While both teams were able to escape ejections for now, those technical fouls to key players could prove significant in such a heated game. Those six players lack a buffer now. If any of them commit another technical foul, they will be ejected, so it will be critical for all involved not to allow the other team to bait them into any sort of confrontation.
