Marquese Chriss and Jared Dudley got off light.
There should have been suspensions involved for the cheap shots leveled on Ricky Rubio by the pair during Thursday night’s blowout Jazz win. Instead, the pair were fined $25,000 a piece by the league Saturday for this incident.
phoenix suns basketball 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/env4iTlfrI
— nbaayy (@nbaayy) March 16, 2018
Rubio has a knee contusion from the incident Jazz coach Quin Snyder confirmed, however, Rubio is available to play Saturday vs. the Kings.
Dudley was given a flagrant 2 and ejected at the time, Chriss was handed just a flagrant 1 for his escalation. I don’t completely buy Dudley’s explanation here either — I think they were pissed Rubio stepped over a down Chriss to inbound the ball and made him pay for it — but he did own up to it being excessive.
Thought Quese got fouled, Ref gave them the ball while he was on the ground with my other teammate trying to help him up.. I wanted to stop the fast break( I always do this) The push was a little much but he flopped and sold it.. Flagrant 1 or 2 and you move on.. https://t.co/Yf6CYlcaFj
— Jared Dudley (@JaredDudley619) March 16, 2018
So to be clear, if you throw a haymaker and miss — as Aaron Afflalo did recently — that’s a two-game suspension. But if you throw or body check a player to the ground, that’s just 25 large, no time missed. Players wanting retaliation will take note of that.
Roulette tables are less random than the NBA’s enforcement policies.
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