{"id":538421,"date":"2026-03-22T10:53:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T10:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/538421\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T10:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T10:53:09","slug":"four-players-ejected-in-thunder-wizards-scuffle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/538421\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Players Ejected In Thunder-Wizards Scuffle"},"content":{"rendered":"

An altercation late in the first half of Saturday\u2019s game between the Thunder and Wizards resulted in four ejections (Twitter video link<\/a> from Bleacher Report).<\/p>\n

\"\"According to Joel Lorenzi and Josh Robbins of The Athletic<\/a>, it started as a dispute between Washington\u2019s Justin Champagnie<\/a> and OKC\u2019s Jaylin Williams<\/a> that quickly involved several other players. Ajay Mitchell<\/a> began exchanging words and shoves with Champagnie along the baseline, and the battle spilled into the courtside seats under the basket.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never seen him like that,\u201d Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> said of Mitchell. \u201cBut at the same time, I\u2019m not really surprised by his reaction. He\u2019s a tough kid, tough as nails. Not only on the court, but off the court as well. He\u2019s as tough as they come, so I knew there\u2019d be no back down when he\u2019s involved in anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a long review by the officials, Champagnie and Williams were each given two technical fouls, which is an automatic ejection. Mitchell and the Thunder\u2019s Cason Wallace<\/a> were assessed one technical apiece and were also thrown out of the game.<\/p>\n

In a pool report<\/a>, crew chief John Goble explained that Champagnie and Williams each received one technical foul for pushing each other during a dead ball. Champagnie\u2019s second technical was for making contact with Mitchell\u2019s face, while Williams was T\u2019d up for his actions during the fight.<\/p>\n

Goble added that Mitchell and Wallace were tossed because they were not \u201cacting as peacemakers\u201d and were \u201cescalating the altercation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wizards\u2019 Anthony Gill<\/a> appeared to shove Mitchell from behind, but Goble stated that no action was taken against him because Wallace pushed Gill into the scrum and it was \u201cnot observed that Gill did anything in an unsportsmanlike manner to assess a penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said he\u2019s \u201cworked with John Goble a long time,\u201d and they discussed the ejections before \u201cagreeing to disagree.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wizards coach Brian Keefe was on the opposite side of the court and couldn\u2019t see much of the scuffle, but he told reporters, \u201cI just know that our guys stuck up for each other, which I always love.\u201d<\/p>\n

The authors note that Saturday\u2019s incident was the third one involving the Thunder in the past few weeks. Luguentz Dort<\/a> and Jeremiah Fears<\/a> had a postgame altercation on January 27 that resulted in $25K fines<\/a> for each of them, and Dort was ejected<\/a> for tripping Denver center Nikola Jokic<\/a> in late February, which prompted a face-to-face confrontation between Jokic and Williams.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a combination of things,\u201d Isaiah Hartenstein<\/a> replied when asked about the skirmishes. \u201cWe\u2019re a physical team. Every time we play, I think there\u2019s always a chip on the other team\u2019s shoulder. We\u2019re also not gonna back down against anything. I don\u2019t really put anyone at fault for that \u2014 it just happens. We have a passionate group of guys, and every time we play, teams are coming with their best shot, and sometimes, it just gets physical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s exchange is expected to result in fines and possible suspensions, which will likely be announced before the Wizards play Sunday night in New York. Oklahoma City\u2019s next game is Monday at Philadelphia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An altercation late in the first half of Saturday\u2019s game between the Thunder and Wizards resulted in four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[56233,240950,228181,56260,21976,56216,207757,120882,99],"class_list":["post-538421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ajay-mitchell","tag-anthony-gill","tag-brian-keefe","tag-cason-wallace","tag-isaiah-hartenstein","tag-jaylin-williams","tag-justin-champagnie","tag-mark-daigneault","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}