The NBA suspended five different players after there was a brutal altercation that unfolded during the Detroit Pistons versus the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday, March 31st at the Target Center in Minneapolis.
The fight started in the middle of the second quarter when a Pistons player, Ron Holland, fouled hardly on Naz Reid on the Timberwolves. When Reid was going up for a layup, he was fouled when trying to get blocked, then Reid confronted Holland, initiating the fight because more players started to get involved, such as Donte DiVincenzo. DiVincenzo started to get involved, escalating the situation because more players started to involve themselves, and the fight started to go into the stands, getting basically on top of fans.
After the fight happened and everything was reviewed and re-watched to see what really happened, they came to the conclusion that Isaiah Stewart on the Pistons will receive a two-game suspension for his role in the fight, as well as him having a troubled past impacting the decision. Then, all of the following players, Ron Holland, Marcus Sasser, Naz Reid, and Donte DiVicenzo, all received one-game suspensions.
However, the players were not the only people who got in trouble. Both the Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff and the Timberwolves assistant head coach Pablo Prigioni were ejected from the game after the fight, but they did not get any further suspensions in future games.
There were some comments left on this altercation by both of the head coaches from both teams, The Timberwolves head coach talked about how the situation escalated. He said, “Two guys went at it and spilled over into the crowd, which was super dangerous. Obviously, it just kept escalating and escalating, mostly from their side, to be honest with you. I thought leading up to that, the game was way too physical.”
Then the Pistons head coach J.B Bickerstaff talks about how his team is going to always have each other’s backs and that’s not going to change. He states, “Obviously things went too far. But what you see if guys looking out for one another, guys trying to protect one another, guys trying to have each other’s backs. Those are non-negotiables in our locker room.”
Even though there was a fight in the game, there was still an outcome to the game, and the Timberwolves ended up winning 123-104, even though the Pistons were up by ten 39-29 when the fight happened. The leading scorers for the game were Juilius Randle for the Timberwolves with 26 points and then Malik Beasley dropped 27 for the Pistons, Anthony Edwards also got 25 points to almost match Julius Randle.
As a result of this fight, both of the teams will have to edit their starting line ups because most of the players that were suspended usually had a lot of playing time and are major players to the team winning, especially Isaiah Stewart for the Pistons.
