Matt Barnes has a bit of a reputation for having a violent streak. Seriously, earlier this year, he said: “Violence is never the answer, but sometimes it is.” That is now my favorite quote, probably ever. So anyways, when Matt Barnes ran in the same direction that John Henson had just gone after the two were ejected, everybody assumed the worst, especially when reports came out that Barnes had entered the Bucks’ locker room looking for Henson.
However, according to Barnes, nothing happened. From Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times:
Barnes said he did not try to enter the Milwaukee Bucks locker room to go after John Henson on Thursday after Henson had blocked his shot and taunted him in the final seconds of a victory over Barnes’ Memphis Grizzlies.
Video footage showed Barnes running off the court and into a tunnel in the same direction as Henson, but Barnes said he was led astray by a worker at the arena.
“I got led into the wrong room,” said Barnes, who was also ejected, “so once I realized I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, I left and went into my locker room.”
Barnes said he wasn’t trying to escalate the situation, but security officials at the arena asked Henson to wait until the Grizzlies’ bus had departed before clearing him to leave.
“Maybe he was just scared,” Barnes said of Henson. “I don’t know why he was waiting. The situation happened on the court. He didn’t want it to spill over, I didn’t want it to spill over and they beat us.”
Barnes said he had spoken with NBA officials about the incident and hoped to be able to play when the Grizzlies faced the Clippers on Saturday night at FedEx Forum.
Barnes sounds uncharacteristically reasonable about this incident, if he’s being truthful.
Yet despite Barnes opening up about it, the NBA has till elected to suspend the troubled forward for one game.
Following from Marc J. Spears of ESPN.
Grizzlies' Matt Barnes has been suspended 1 game w/o pay for attempting to enter Bucks’ locker room & verbally challenging Bucks John Henson
— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpearsESPN) March 19, 2016
Bucks' Greivis Vasquez fined $15K for following Henson to locker room while Giannis Antetokounmpo & Greg Monroe have each been fined $10,000
— Marc J. Spears (@MarcJSpearsESPN) March 19, 2016
