All four of the players who were ejected from Thursday night’s game between the Utah Jazz and the Indiana Pacers now owe the league a little bit of money. Indiana’s Myles Turner and Utah’s Rudy Gobert, Joe Ingles, and Donovan Mitchell have received fines for their roles in the altercation, with Gobert getting handed the harshest punishment of the bunch.
Gobert and Turner got tangled up after the former pulled the latter to the ground by his shorts, which led to the two fighting by grabbing each others arms and moving a little bit. As a result, Gobert was fined $35,000 and Turner owes $25,000. In the ensuing fracas, it was determined that Ingles pushed a referee, while Mitchell escalated things. Ingles got a $30,000 fine as a result, while Mitchell got the smallest fine of the bunch, as he’s now out $20,000.
After the game, both big men spoke about the incident, with Turner saying, “I had to stand up for myself in that situation. I don’t think I did anything wrong. But that’s not for me to decide. We’ll talk to the league and see what happens from there.” Gobert, meanwhile, expressed that he wasn’t going to throw a punch, but if someone wants to fight him, there are avenues to make that happen.
“If I don’t feel threatened I’m not gonna throw a punch and get suspended and hurt my team so I didn’t feel no threat at all and I’m not gonna fight on the basketball court,” Gobert said. “But if someone wants to fight I’m easy to reach. I’m very easy to reach. I’m just not going to do it on social media, like if anyone got a problem, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, easy.”
