The NBA Playoffs are a cauldron of tempers and emotions. That’s what happens when the stakes are high and the same teams play five, six, sometimes seven times in a row.
Usually though, we expect to see players beefing with players. On Tuesday, the beefs spilled off the court.
First, there was a shouting match in Toronto between Raptors mascot Drake and Cavs center Kendrick Perkins, who was inactive and in street clothes for the game.
The problem apparently started when Drake overheard Perkins mouthing off to Raptors center Serge Ibaka. It was all in good fun, Perkins later said.
“I was fucking with Serge, my old teammate,” he told ESPN. “I wasn’t talking to [Drake].”
“[I was] telling him, ‘We about to win this game,’ and Drake butted in talking shit to me,” Perkins said. “He said something slick, so I said something back: ‘Sit your ass down and watch the game.'”
Drake chimed in on Instagram, writing that he only told Perkins he “liked the hem on his capris.”
Meanwhile in Oakland, Warriors forward and infamous dick kicker Draymond Green got into it with Rajon Rondo of the Pelicans during game two of their Western Conference semi-final. The confrontation wasn’t too far out of the ordinary, but it was elevated into something more by Charles Barkley.
After the Warriors win, the NBA on TNT crew was breaking down the beef between Green and Rondo, when Barkley said, “I just want somebody to punch him in the face.”
“I want to punch his ass in the face, I do,” he added.
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Asked to respond after the game, Green did no mince words.
“A lot of guys talk on TV,” Green said. “Stand behind the microphone on the TV screen. Fact of the matter is, if you feel that strongly about something, he’s even seen me a million times, then punch me in my face when you see me. If you’re not going to punch me in my face when you see me, then shut up. It’s no different than somebody sitting behind a computer screen, tweeting, ‘I’ll knock you out,’ and you never see him in life.
“He’s seen me a bunch of times. Punch me in the face when you see me, or if not, no one cares what you would have done. You’re old and it is what it is. You ain’t going to punch me when you see me, then stop talking about it, period.”
Green later told The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami that TNT might want to get involved.
“I think it’s pretty sad,” Green told The Athletic. “It’s probably something that needs to … when you look at the president of TNT, David Levy, which I know well, it’s kind of embarrassing on their behalf … I’m an employee of the NBA, he’s an employee of TNT. And you have your biggest sponsor, one of the faces of that company, saying that on national television. That’s embarrassing for them. So that’s something — a problem that they have.”
And that’s not all! Green’s mom even chimed in and stuck for his not-so-little boy.
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