When you see the play above most people who are not Thunder faithful thought Serge Ibaka punched Blake Griffin in the groin and should have been ejected. But he wasn’t, it was ruled a flagrant 1 foul, and Ibaka went on to make key plays down the stretch (including drawing Griffin’s sixth foul) that helped lift the Thunder over the Clippers Sunday.
So is the league going to step in and up the penalty and suspend Ibaka? Nope.
The league announced that it has upgraded the foul from a Flagrant 1 to a Flagrant 2, but Ibaka will only be fined $25,000 and not suspended for a game (Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated reported this was how it would go down). If the referees had called a flagrant 2 in the game Ibaka would have been ejected and maybe the end of the game plays out differently. The Clippers are shaking their heads at this one, and they should be.
My two cents: It was a bad call then and is a bad call now. It looks like what the league wanted was to make sure Ibaka was in uniform Tuesday night when the Thunder face the Lakers on national televisio.
Ibaka’s supporters say that he wasn’t throwing a punch, he was trying to dislodge Blake’s hand as he had a fistful of Ibaka’s jersey? My response is that fistfuls of jerseys are grabbed on better than half the rebound battles in the NBA, but you don’t get to take a swing to dislodge the guy’s hand.
That’s not how the league sees it.
We also are still awaiting word on if J.J. Barea will get a fine or suspension for his body check of Ray Allen on Monday night.