The Timberwolves were already down 10 points to Orlando, working their way through another listless game against a less-than-stellar opponent, when a huge fight broke out in front of the Magic bench with 1:32 left in the third quarter Friday night at Target Center.
Until that doozie, this game was a dozer.
A fight that started between the Wolves' Austin Rivers and Orlando's Mo Bamba — who was on the bench at the time — sparked a scrum that, after review, ended with the ejection of Rivers, Jaden McDaniels and Taurean Prince for the Wolves, and Bamba and former Minnesota high school star Jalen Suggs for Orlando. It changed the intensity of the game but not the direction in Orlando's 127-120 victory.
The reverberations promise to linger; there will no doubt be fines and suspensions and Wolves coach Chris Finch will have to figure out how to navigate that without three wings who are in his rotation.
Here's what happened from Rivers' point of view:
He said Bamba had been talking trash to him for a while. It started after he missed a three-pointer and continued. Rivers wouldn't get into what was said, but he clearly didn't like it.
"He proceeded to talk,'' Rivers said. "So that next possession, when I was down there I just said, pretty much, 'Keep it respectful, Bro.' I'm not trying to portray myself as a wanna-be tough guy. That's not my MO. But for anyone who knows me, I'm not going to let somebody disrespect me or talk crazy. I just feel back I got thrown out of the game. I felt I let my team down.''
Rivers got into Bamba. Bamba got up off the bench and took a swing at Rivers but missed. Then, according to Rivers, both after the game and on Instagram later, he went ''one on five.'' On Instagram, Rivers wrote: "U needed ur teammates otherwise U would have been [choked] out.''