Russell Westbrook Called Carmelo Anthony’s Ejection ‘A Bunch Of Bullsh*t’

The Blazers beat the Thunder on Sunday night 103-99 in Portland, but what most people were talking about after the game wasn’t Damian Lillard’s 36-point, 13-assist performance or the Blazers getting an important win over a possible Western Conference playoff opponent.

Instead, the conversation about Sunday night’s game was Carmelo Anthony’s ejection for a Flagrant 2 violation on a layup attempt. It was one of the most bizarre ejections in recent memory, as Anthony caught Jusuf Nurkic with an elbow to the head while going up for a layup.

By the letter of the law, a Flagrant 1 could have been understandable for making forceable contact to Nurkic’s head, but the decision to give him a Flagrant 2 and eject him seemed, to most everyone watching, to be a ridiculous decision. It appeared as though Anthony was attempting to create contact for an and-1 opportunity and jumped into Nurkic to initiate that contact, with his elbows out and ended up hitting him in the head. Otherwise, there wasn’t an awful lot that appeared malicious about the play.

After the game, Anthony, his Thunder teammates, and coach Billy Donovan were all still stunned and confused by his ejection. Donovan told reporters after the game, he’d never seen a player get ejected after getting an and-1 call on the floor for the same play, and the common refrain in the locker room was that you’d have to ask the league about why the Flagrant 2 was handed down, via ESPN’s Royce Young)

“I’ve never seen in the history of the game a guy get an and-1 play and then get ejected from the game,” Thunder coach Billy Donovan told reporters. “That’s probably something you’ve got to talk to the league about.”

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“I don’t have no thoughts,” Anthony told reporters following the game. “I don’t have anything to say about that play. I think the league will do what’s right.”

Russell Westbrook, meanwhile, didn’t hold anything back in discussing what he feels is inconsistent officiating when it comes to players getting hit in the face, calling Anthony’s ejection “a bunch of bullsh*t” and “nonsense.”

“The last game, tipped ball against the Celtics, I accidentally hit the guy in the face, flagrant foul on me, it was an accident, but I hit him,” Westbrook said. “I accidentally got hit in the face today, nobody looks at it. Melo go, get Nurkic, ‘oh we’re going to review it.’ Bunch of bulls*t in my opinion. They don’t referee the same way all the time. They pick and choose when they want to do it, which is not fair in my opinion.”

While there will be very few that watched the game that don’t agree with Westbrook’s assessment of Anthony’s ejection being “nonsense,” we know how the NBA feels about players or coaches ripping the officiating in the league, so Westbrook can almost assuredly expect some kind of fine to come his way.