Late in the second half of the Nets’ win over the Celtics, Keith Bogans decided to stop Leandro Barbosa from scoring on a fast break. Not by playing actual defense, mind you, or even by attempting to make a play on the ball. No, Bogans simply grabbed Barbosa around the neck to end the play before he could score, and then tried to hold him up, presumably to avoid Barbosa being injured.
Bogans wasn’t even assessed a flagrant foul on the play, but he should have been. And he should have been thrown out of the game.
These types of plays are dangerous, and should result in a flagrant-two and an automatic ejection. Preventing uncontested layups is an understandable defensive policy for a team to enforce, but all Bogans had to do was jump up and try to block the shot attempt, which not only would have been a legitimate basketball play, but even had he committed a personal foul while doing so, would have been much less likely to cause an injury than his chosen course of action.