Without LeBron James on the court, the Los Angeles Lakers took an L in Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, putting their record at 9-10 on the season.
It’s a brutal loss that put them another step behind. EVen after the defeat, however, the bigger story was LeBron James and the suspension he had to serve for his altercation with Pistons big man Isaiah Stewart.
Anthony Davis shared his thoughts in the immediate aftermath of that ordeal, unsurprisingly siding with James.
“Everyone in the league knows LeBron is not a dirty guy.” Says that the moment he realized he had clocked Stewart, LeBron was trying to apologize and say “my bad.” Once Stewart was charging, AD says “I don’t know what he was doing, but we wasn’t going to allow that.”
This time, responding to the suspension specifically, Davis again came to the defense of his teammate, explaining why he disagrees with the punishment the NBA handed down:
“I was surprised,” Davis said. “I didn’t think he would get suspended. I don’t think anyone thought he was going to be suspended, to be honest. It was an accident. He accidentally hit him in the face. But I guess the report came out that his hit to the face caused an incident, which is weird because he can’t control how the guy is going to react. Guys get hit in the face all the time, and we’re saying that caused the incident.”
Davis does make a good point here. While it was LeBron’s swing that initiated the whole thing, he had no way to know that Stweart would go off like that.
In fact, had Stewart not gotten so angry in the first place, the NBA might not have handed down a suspension at all.
We’ll never know the answer for sure, but the whole thing is over now. James served his time, and life goes on.
Hopefully, that’s the last time King James will ever get himself into a situation like that…
