The Oklahoma City Thunder blew out the Dallas Mavericks tonight, winning the game by 19 points. They won despite losing Russell Westbrook in the second quarter. Mavs point guard JJ Barea was guarding Westbrook in the post, and the two got tangled up, which is pretty routine. What happened next wasn’t quite as routine, though. A few shoves were thrown in there, as seen in the videos below:
Full tussle includes Charlie Villanueva grabbing Westbrook's throat, looked like Ibaka's too pic.twitter.com/amsVZqTuHU
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) January 14, 2016
As you can clearly see, Charlie Villanueva grabbed Westbrook’s throat — quite an aggressive attack. Ibaka, Westbrook, and Barea were given technical fouls for the scuffle. Villanueva was ejected on the spot. That was Westbrook’s second tech of the night, so he too was suspended.
Villanueva undoubtedly deserved the ejection. It doesn’t seem like Westbrook’s actions were too far, he was really just trying to break free of Barea’s grasp at first. He did act a bit aggressively though, what with the chest bumping and all. That probably warranted a technical. Though some fans from Dallas and OKC alike probably feel that their team was victimized by the refs, the officials did a pretty fair job assessing the situation and penalizing the players.
