Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle isn’t happy with Kevin Durant, or the Oklahoma City Thunder for that matter. He accused Durant and the Thunder of playing dirty in Game 3 Thursday. In particular, Carlisle was upset about an elbow thrown by Durant in the chest of Salah Mejri.
“There were four, what I would categorize as, non-basketball physical escalations that were initiated by them,” Carlisle said to reporters Friday, “including one intentional, unprovoked elbow at the free-throw line that I didn’t understand and I’ve never seen a guy like Kevin Durant ever do that to a player.”
“Ultimately, that led to two more escalations between the teams. So I’m concerned about that. There’s no place for that in our game. They were clearly the initiators last night. And we got to be more aggressive.”
There were 54 personal fouls called in Game 3 compared to 36 in Game 2, and technical fouls were called on Raymond Felton and Steven Adams for a tussle under the basket. As for the Durant-Mejri dislike, that’s been there since Game 1.
Salah Mejri has ZERO interest in having KD help him up https://t.co/NtNwjLRDSV
— The Cauldron (ICYMI) (@CauldronICYMI) April 17, 2016
Game 4 is on Saturday. Don’t miss it.
