At media day this year, Austin Rivers said he was here to play defense. Rivers, 30, is one of the Minnesota Timberwolves’ veterans. He’s the son of Doc Rivers, the legendary coach who delivered Kevin Garnett his only NBA Championship and currently coaches the Philadelphia 76ers. Rivers has been around the game for a long time.
Rudy Gobert, 30, is the only other player who isn’t in his 20s. Karl-Anthony Towns, 27, and D’Angelo Russell, 26, are max players with ample experience. Towns is hurt, though, and Russell is on an expiring contract. Anthony Edwards, 21, has the most upside, but the Timberwolves aren’t built around him. They are not his team yet.
Therefore, Rivers found himself in an awkward position after Friday’s loss to the Orlando Magic. Rivers and Mo Bamba got into a physical altercation late in the third quarter, which led to a brawl. Jalen Suggs put him in a headlock, and Taurean Prince and Jaden McDaniels came to his defense. Mayhem ensued.
Rivers said that Bamba ignited the altercation by using disrespectful language and that he was acting in self-defense. Security escorted Rivers and Bamba out of the arena, but they had a verbal altercation in the hallway. Chris Finch was upset that the officials ejected three of his players while they only removed two Orlando players.
“Their guy came off the bench and threw a punch. Pretty egregious,” said Finch. “Then it’s a melee, and somehow our guys get punished a lot worse. One guy got sent for not being a peacekeeper. I just looked at the film, and I didn’t see any difference between what their guys were going and what our guys were doing.”
Bamba left the bench to fight Rivers and received the largest punishment. However, the league only suspended Bamba (four) for one more game than Rivers (three). Suggs got one game for escalating the altercation by grabbing Rivers by the neck. The NBA fined McDaniels $20,000 for pushing Bamba in the back, and they did not suspend Prince.
Finch was not upset with Rivers after the incident. “I’m not making any judgment on Austin and what he did,” he said. “I have no idea what started it or what happened. They had a guy come off the bench and throw a punch, which is one of the most egregious things you can do in the league right now in these situations. No, I make no judgment on Austin.”
Rivers spoke at length about the incident after the game. He emphasized that he had no prior issues with Bamba and that he’s a Magic fan. Rivers lives in Orlando in the offseason, loves the city, and pulls for the Magic as long as they’re not playing the Wolves. He was most upset that Suggs, who played at Minnehaha Academy, grabbed him by the neck.
“[Bamba] threw a punch, it missed, and then [Suggs] grabbed me…by my neck,” he said. “That’s what bothered me the most. That’s the only thing that’s kinda hurting right now is somebody came and grabbed me by my neck. That’s a big no-no. And then I was on the ground for whatever time. I don’t know, it was chaos.”
Bamba and Rivers escalated things on social media, which the NBA factored into each player’s suspension. However, Rivers wisely diffused things after the game. While he was upset that Bamba was “talking crazy” for three or four plays before the incident and that Suggs grabbed his neck, he wasn’t acting out of machismo.
“I’m not trying to portray myself as some wannabe tough guy, that’s not even my MO,” he said. “But for anybody who knows me, I’m not gonna let somebody disrespect me or talk crazy.
“I just feel bad that I got thrown out of a game, and I felt I let my team down. And in the process, two other guys, important players for our team, got thrown out as well. Which makes me feel really bad. And I only got to play ten minutes tonight, my night was cut short because of that.”
It’s hard to know exactly what happened leading up to the altercation. NBA arenas are loud, and only the people sitting closest to the players heard what they said. Bamba and Suggs didn’t comment on it after the game. There are multiple camera angles on the fight, but none were optimized for it because the play was on the other end of the court. Rivers was a principle actor in the fight, but it’s hard to see him acting any differently than he did when Bamba left the bench.
Ultimately, Rivers couldn’t change anything he did when he took the podium after the game. The NBA doesn’t want to make fighting part of the game like hockey does. Rivers, Bamba, and anyone else involved could have gotten injured. As Rivers said, he hurt his team because he couldn’t finish the game. Therefore, he did the wisest thing he could have done at that moment. He said he wasn’t pretending to be a tough guy. Rivers played defense in a way he probably wasn’t expecting to at media day, and he did so with aplomb.
