Fists Thrown, Suspensions Looming: Massive Brawl Erupts During LeBron's First Game in LA
The roster-building experiment the Los Angeles Lakers are trying this year involves a disparate mix of volatile players in the hopes that they’ll coalesce into a source of infinite energy they can parlay into a trip to the NBA Finals and a fourth championship ring for LeBron James.
Trouble is, sometimes when you mix up a bunch of dangerous chemicals, what you get is more akin to chlorine trifluoride, the chemical that can set asbestos on fire.
And Saturday night at Staples Center in Los Angeles? Well, Rajon Rondo was the chlorine trifluoride and Chris Paul was the asbestos.
ICYMI: Chris Paul and Rajon Rondo came to blows in a Lakers-Rockets brawl. pic.twitter.com/s28TT81eys
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 21, 2018
There’s something you don’t see every day in the NBA in there as well. Plenty of players get into shoving matches in a highly competitive environment, but for Rondo to uncork a straight left right in CP3’s grill? That’s a twist that would do M. Night Shyamalan proud.
Then, just to throw some more gasoline on the fire, Brandon Ingram of the Lakers, who had no dog in this fight, came in flying with a punch of his own, guaranteeing himself a suspension once the league office sees what happened.
And as Jeff Van Gundy pointed out on the ESPN broadcast, Ingram’s little outburst should draw a far longer suspension precisely because it was completely gratuitous and unnecessary.
Jeff Van Gundy with a great point that Brandon Ingram should get the longest suspension as a 3rd man in throwing punches
— Marc Abrams (@MAbramsboxing) October 21, 2018
Stephen A. Smith concurred with Van Gundy, saying Ingram will receive the “stiffest suspension” while also pointing out that Kiki Vandeweghe, the league’s disciplinary chief, was at the game and saw everything with his own eyes in the heat of the moment.
And then, against all common sense and capacity for understanding, did LeBron rush to the aid of his own teammate?
Nope. James was the one restraining and calming down Paul. He essentially abandoned Rondo and Ingram to the wolves, and not in the good way that would bring them Jimmy Butler.
This is devastating to the Lakers, who are already 0-2 to start the season after losing to Portland and then ultimately to Houston on Saturday.
They’ll lose one of the few young players on their roster who actually has real NBA potential. If Ingram gets a lengthy suspension that keeps him out for the 20-plus games that Twitter seems to believe are coming to him, that’s a season killer.
Rondo is likely going to be out for a good while as well for landing that punch right in Chris Paul’s mug, so the Lakers will have to give extended minutes to a guy in Lonzo Ball whose shooting wouldn’t pass muster in the G-League.
James may have made a career out of dragging terrible teams to the Finals, but that was in the East.
The West is going to eat his lunch, and this extreme lapse of discipline — first by Ingram in committing the cheap foul on James Harden that started this brawl, and then later by Rondo and Ingram by throwing actual closed fists — could prove decisive when the Lakers’ record ends up “if only they’d had those guys” short of making the playoffs come April.
Then again, if there’s a bright side to all this, it does give James a chance to show off just how much he can single-handedly affect the direction of a franchise. If he drags this bunch of castoffs and nobodies to the playoffs, Michael Jordan himself ought to hand LeBron the MVP trophy and tell anyone who will listen that the greatest-of-all-time debate is over.
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