PHOENIX — Can we call it a wild and crazy night in the desert, when Nuggets center Nikola Jokic scored a career-high 53 points, but by far his most memorable shot knocked billionaire Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia on his entitled, flopping keister?
And now, after Jokic got hit with a technical foul for his role in the confrontation, this classic basketball playoff series could be decided on whether the NBA decides to forgive Jokic or suspend him for tussling with Ishbia.
“They’re not going to protect me? They’re going to protect the fan?” Jokic said Sunday, when his confrontation with Ishbia overshadowed both his record-setting performance and the Suns’ 129-124 victory.
Well, a suspension is indeed in order.
Ishbia shouldn’t be allowed back in the arena for an NBA playoff game until he learns how to behave.
“I think it’s crazy that Nikola got a technical foul in the situation,” said Malone, after Phoenix again rode the magnificence of Kevin Durant and Devin Booker to level this best-of-seven series at two victories apiece.
I asked Malone if he thought it made any difference that Jokic got physical with an owner of an NBA franchise?
“I don’t give a (bleep),” Malone replied. “I really don’t care.”
The NBA frowns upon players confronting fans in the stands. But if you’re asking me if a fine or suspension is merited for Jokic, let me respond in the form of a question of my own?
Are you nuts?
The ref “told me I was elbowing the fan. But the fan put a hand on me first,” said Jokic, who acknowledged that he knows the fan in question is Ishbia. “I thought the league is suppose to protect us. Or whatever. Maybe I’m wrong. We shall see.”
He might be a billionaire born with a silver spoon, but Ishbia will forever be the scrappy little point guard who sat at the end of Tom Izzo’s bench at Michigan State.
Late in the second quarter, with the Nuggets clinging to a 55-54 lead, the basketball bounced into the crowd near the Phoenix hoop, and Ishbia executed a flop that would shame any soccer player in the world.
The Suns owner inserted himself into the fray after Jokic blocked a shot and the ball bounced off Phoenix guard Josh Okogie and into the hands of Ishbia, who bounced up from his seat along the baseline.
When Jokic went to retrieve the ball, Ishbia refused to surrender the rock. Maybe as a guy who paid $4 billion for a pro sports franchise, Ishbia figures he owns the ball. Or perhaps, Ishbia, who cheered from the bench as Mateen Cleaves won a national championship in 2000, and finished with 28 points in his career with the Spartans, was trying to recreate his college glory days.
Ishbia might be filthy rich, but he’s way too small to wrestle with the Joker. The ball squirted loose in the tussle. Jokic planted an elbow in Ishbia’s chest, and the Suns owner acted as if he had been cratered by a two-ton meteor falling from outer space. Ishbia crumbled to the ground, begging the refs for a call.
“Was it the owner? He was holding the ball, he was withholding the ball. Joker was trying to get the ball and he was wrestling the ball from Joker. That’s ridiculous,” said Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon, who believes if Ishbia were a common fan he would’ve been ejected from the building. “I get it that it’s your organization. But allow the players to play. Allow the game to play. Just don’t do that. That was super lame.”
The refs obliged, tagging Jokic with a technical foul, and Durant promptly turned Ishbia’s gift into a point for the Suns.
After the Phoenix victory, in which superstars Booker and Durant only needed 37 shots between them to score an efficient 72 points for which the Denver defense had no answers, associates of Ishbia chuckled in the arena tunnel about his flop.
Moments later, when Ishbia emerged from the same tunnel, followed closely by former Detroit Pistons star Isiah Thomas, I congratulated the Suns owner. But not on the victory.
“Way to sell the flop, Mat,” I said, looking him directly in the eye.
Ishbia dropped his gaze and marched on without a word to me.
He consulted with Thomas before they exited through a door together, a notorious Bad Boy from the Pistons’ glory years and 43-year-old spoiled brat who thinks he’s enough part of the game to bait Jokic into a technical foul.
If anybody deserves punishment from the NBA in this silly tussle between the Nuggets center and the Suns owner, it’s Ishbia, the petulant child who started it all.
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