Carmelo Anthony Got Ejected For A Flagrant Foul While He Was Attempting A Layup

The NBA has made it a point of emphasis to protect players from taking hits to the head by making it almost an automatic flagrant for any forcible contact to the head and neck region.

On Sunday night in Portland, the enforcement of that policy was taken to the extreme with a very questionable decision to eject Carmelo Anthony for hitting Jusuf Nurkic in the head with his elbow as he went for a layup.

Anthony took off from the left side of the hoop and went up for the layup as Nurkic came from the other side to contest. Anthony appeared to look to take contact from Nurkic and earn a trip to the foul line by leaning into the Blazers center, with his elbow catching Nurkic in the face before he threw up the circus layup attempt. Somehow, that was deemed to be an egregious enough violation to warrant a Flagrant 2 call and an ejection.

You can judge from the video yourself.

You can see the stunned reaction from the rest of the Thunder players and Anthony’s disbelief at being thrown out for that. Even if you placed the most malicious of intent into Anthony driving at Nurkic with his elbows out on purpose, the contact is worthy of a Flagrant 1 for the blow to the head, but not an ejection.

A number of NBA players took to Twitter to voice their confusion with the call against Anthony.