{"id":353852,"date":"2023-12-14T07:19:38","date_gmt":"2023-12-14T08:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=353852"},"modified":"2023-12-15T00:04:16","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T00:04:16","slug":"giannis-confronts-pacers-in-melee-over-game-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=353852","title":{"rendered":"Giannis confronts Pacers in 'melee' over game ball"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/a> exchanged heated words with members of the Indiana staff and raced toward the Pacers\u2019 locker room as the teams squared off in a hallway in a dispute over the game ball following the Milwaukee star\u2019s franchise-record 64-point performance.<\/p>\n

After the Bucks' 140-126 victory, Antetokounmpo had an animated discussion with Indiana star Tyrese Haliburton and other Pacers' before rushing from the court toward the Indiana locker room in search of the ball.<\/p>\n

The Bucks wanted the game ball for Antetokounmpo. Indiana coach Rick Carlisle said the Pacers took the ball for Oscar Tshiebwe, who scored his first official NBA point.<\/p>\n

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That led to a confrontation between members of the teams in the arena hallway. Afterward, there still was confusion over who had which game ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no idea. I\u2019m not going to lie,\u201d Antetokounmpo said.<\/p>\n

\"Giannis<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no idea. I don\u2019t know. I really don\u2019t know. I have a ball, but I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s the game ball. It doesn\u2019t feel like the game ball to me. It feels like a brand new ball. I can tell. I played, what, 35 minutes today. I know how the game ball felt. The ball that I have, which I\u2019ll take and I\u2019ll give it to my mum for sure, but I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s actually the game ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

One video appears to show the actual game ball being collected by a member of the Bucks' staff. Carlisle said the Pacers apparently have a reserve game ball they took after the game.<\/p>\n

Bucks guard Cameron Payne said he was one of the players who went down the tunnel.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan wanted that ball,\u201d Payne said. \u201cI\u2019m following my team, helping my teammate out. It was just a lot of commotion, honestly. He just wanted his ball, man.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/KingJosiah54\/status\/1735150919350993249<\/a><\/p>\n

Carlisle said a number of the Bucks were in the hallway near the Indiana locker room and a confrontation occurred, with Indiana\u2019s general manager getting elbowed in the ribs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened after the game was unfortunate,\u201d Carlisle said. \u201cThere was a misunderstanding about the game ball. … We were not thinking about Giannis\u2019 franchise record, so we grabbed the ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of minutes later, several of their players ended up in our hallway, and there was a big, I don\u2019t know what to call it, a fracas, melee, whatever. I don\u2019t think any punches were landed, but my general manager got elbowed in the ribs by one of their players. He certainly had a bruised rib and who knows if it\u2019s anything more than that. Unfortunate situation.<\/p>\n

\"Giannis<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need the official game ball. There\u2019s two game balls there. We could have taken the other one, but it didn\u2019t need to escalate to that. Really unfortunate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carlisle cited the teams playing three times in the last few weeks and said that things were heated between the teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Giannis Antetokounmpo exchanged heated words with members of the Indiana staff and raced toward the Pacers\u2019 locker room as the teams squared off in a […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":353854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=353852"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":353857,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353852\/revisions\/353857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/353854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=353852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=353852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=353852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}