The goal of the NBA In-Season Tournament was to increase the intensity of the early season, and in that regard Tuesday night’s games were a success, as we saw a couple scuffles breakout in the late window of games, most notably in San Francisco where Klay Thompson, Jaden McDaniels, and Draymond Green got ejected less than two minutes into the game.
After Thompson and McDaniels got into it for locking in on each other’s uniforms and refusing to let go, Rudy Gobert came in to pry Thompson off of McDaniels and ended up getting hauled off himself by Green, who put the Frenchman in a sleeper hold. That early scrap became the headline of the game, and even though it wasn’t a TNT game, the fellas in Studio J down in Atlanta couldn’t let their halftime report go by without giving the people a little bit of what they wanted, which was everyone chuckling at the video of Draymond throwing a headlock on Rudy.
After their main halftime segment on Clippers-Nuggets, they came back for 30 seconds just to show the video of the fight and let Shaq remix the In-Season Tournament anthem — “Mama Said Knock You Out” — to “Mama Said Choke You Out.”
Shaq, Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Ernie Johnson with a quick reaction to the Timberwolves-Warriors scuffle during Inside The NBA halftime show: pic.twitter.com/pN68EB2UGz
— Oh No He Didn't (@ohnohedidnt24) November 15, 2023
It’s great work by Shaq and while I’m sure they’ll have more on the fracas in San Francisco later on Inside the NBA, they couldn’t help but have some fun with their colleague’s ejection at the half.