NBA Roundtable: Is Giannis to Blame for Bucks–Kings Scrum?

After a foul on the star, Milwaukee center Brook Lopez brawled with Sacramento’s Trey Lyles.

With 15.4 seconds left in Milwaukee’s 133–124 win over Sacramento on Monday night, Kings forward Trey Lyles fouled Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo. Milwaukee center Brook Lopez took exception to the foul, and Lyles responded by shoving Lopez in the face. It resulted in a scrum where other players and coaches came in to separate the two players.

Things just got HEATED between Trey Lyles and Brook Lopez 👀 pic.twitter.com/mjHK0xwLW6

— Kings on NBCS (@NBCSKings) March 14, 2023

SI senior writers Chris Herring and Chris Mannix weigh in on the incident.

Defending players in the NBA isn’t anything new, but how commonplace is it?

Mannix: Pretty common. Look—no one fights in today’s NBA. The days of Larry Bird throwing haymakers at Bill Laimbeer or Shaq swinging at Charles Barkley are over. The NBA has made fighting penalties so punitive that no one wants to risk suspension. So there’s no downside in going nose-to-nose with anyone in today’s game. Good on Lopez for grappling with Lyles, I suppose. But this was about as low risk/high reward as it gets.

Herring: It’s pretty par for the course. It’s rare for anyone to actually fight nowadays, and it’s never exactly been common to see star players going at it, because they matter too much. (NBA salaries today indicate that, as do multimillion-dollar betting markets.) So of course folks are going to step in when they see their star teammate is being targeted or retaliated against, both to show camaraderie and to protect him from bearing the brunt of any potential contact or suspension.

How much is Giannis to blame, if at all, for the altercation?

Mannix: All of it. Watch the replay: Giannis dribbled directly into Lyles’s path. There was no need for it. The Bucks were up eight. All Giannis had to do was park himself at midcourt and dribble out the clock. Instead he cut right in front of Lyles who, understandably, deemed that disrespectful. Giannis is doing some weird things lately. He intentionally missed a layup to secure the rebound needed for a triple double (or so he thought), and now he’s picking a fight with … Trey Lyles? Come on. That was a cheap move by Giannis, and he knows it.

Herring: Giannis got unnecessarily cute (or annoying, depending on how you see it) at the very end of the game. No clue why, when he could have easily stood still and avoided Lyles’s path. That doesn’t mean Lyles needed to shove him, but it also wasn’t surprising that he did, particularly on the Kings’ home floor. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but Giannis—brilliant as his game is—didn’t need to do that to begin with.

Mike Brown said this after the game … thoughts?: “I don’t know what happened, but we ain’t takin’ no s--- from nobody, Trust me on that. And they all gonna have each other’s back in there.”

Mannix: Blah, blah, blah. Let me repeat: No one is fighting in today’s NBA. I’m sure the disrespect Lyles felt by Giannis dribbling in front of him will be felt by Kings fans for generations, but this was ticky-tack stuff. A pathetic move by Giannis. An overreaction by Lyles. An extreme overreaction by Lopez. Everyone acted like a tough guy. Everyone can save face. Now everyone can move on.

Herring: I enjoy Mike, and he’s the clear-cut Coach of the Year this season. Should probably be unanimous. But I wouldn’t mind seeing the Kings showcase some of that physicality—some of that “ain’t takin’ no s--- from nobody” mentality—on the defensive end instead of doing it over something like that. As a potential No. 2 seed, the porous Kings’ defense needs to be better than surrendering 80 points in the second half on its home court if they want to be more than a feel-good story. Still, Brown is trying to change the culture in Sacramento, and instances like Monday’s probably do help some in that regard.