Former UW Standout Isaiah Stewart Has Another NBA Tantrum

The one-time Husky big man throws opponent down, gets ejected.
Pistons center Isaiah Stewart, the ex-Husky, is ejected from the game for a flagrant foul on Indiana Pacers center Thomas Bryant.
Pistons center Isaiah Stewart, the ex-Husky, is ejected from the game for a flagrant foul on Indiana Pacers center Thomas Bryant. / Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images

When he was at the University of Washington for a solitary season, Isaiah Stewart was known as this gentle soul who played exceedingly hard for a bad team.

Yet on Wednesday night, the 6-foot-8 Detroit Pistons big man was best described as coming unhinged after he threw Indiana's Thomas Bryant to the floor, was immediately ejected from the game and led off gesturing to the Pacers bench and then to the crowd.

This comes a year after Stewart arbitrarily punched Phoenix Suns' center Drew Eubanks as both men were walking into the arena for a game, was arrested and drew a three-game suspension.

In 2021, an angry Stewart charged multiple times at LeBron James, who hit him with an elbow that drew blood, during a game and was restrained each time before getting ejected.

He's a player known across the NBA as "Beef Stew," but that's way too many beefs now for an apparently easy-to-anger player who seemed mature beyond his years when he spent the 2019-20 basketball season as a freshman for Mike Hopkins' Huskies.

While that UW team completely fell apart, going from 10-2 to 15-17 once point guard Quade Green became academically ineligible, Stewart was an even-keel player who kept his cool at all times as he was rewarded with a first-team All-Pac-12 selection and entered the draft early.

As for what happened in Indiana, Stewart said in a postgame interview with the gathered media that he got baited into misbehaving, but he was far from contrite.

"A lot of talk, a lot of words — I know that’s what opponents are going to do because that’s all they have, is words,” Stewart said. “I slipped up, fell for the trap, and I let my teammates down. … I have to be better at not letting those words allow me to affect the team. I know my squad could have used me out there tonight, and going forward, all they got for me is words. They don’t have anything else.”

If anything, Stewart must be more than a little frustrated that he's gone from starter to reserve and had his minutes cut noticeably in this, his fifth NBA season.

After starting 163 of 173 games over a three-year span, he's opened just three of 43 outings for the Pistons this season and watched his minutes drop from 30.9 per game to 20.3. The good news for him is Detroit is much improved with a 23-24 record.

Meantime, Stewart will probably need to get that anger in check at some point if he intends to stay in the league.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington


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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.