“Emotions were flaring. At the end of the day, we would love to keep it basketball, but things happen. Everybody was just playing hard,” Duren said after the match.<\/p>\n
“This isn’t the first time that people have tried to be like extra aggressive with us and talk to us, whatever the case may be.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day, emotions got high with everybody being competitive. Things happen.”<\/p>\n
Bridges later apologised to fans, writing on Instagram: “Sorry Hornets nation! Sorry Hornets Organization! Always going to protect my team-mates forever.”<\/p>\n
Lead official John Goble said in a post-game report the players were ejected because they “engaged in fighting activity during the dead ball”.<\/p>\n
“After review, we assessed fighting fouls, and by rule, they were ejected from the game,” he added.<\/p>\n
Lee, asked about the clash between Diabate and Duren that triggered the wider brawl, said: “Two guys got in a heated conversation and then it kind of spiralled from there.”<\/p>\n
Of his own ejection in the fourth quarter, Lee added: “I’ve got to have a little bit better emotional control in that moment.”<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry will miss Sunday’s All-Star game with an injury to his right knee. <\/p>\n
However, the Warriors are hopeful Curry will return after the All-Star break for the game against the Boston Celtics on 19 February. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Emotions were flaring. At the end of the day, we would love to keep it basketball, but things…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-470357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}