Tempers flared as the clock ran down in the final minutes of the Spurs vs. Raptors game in San Antonio on Monday night, October 23. And the two players pit in the middle of the tension served as no surprise at all to fans and players on both benches who are aware of their history of confrontation with one another. As Blazer's star Damian Lillard put it when he later took to Twitter to reflect on the spat, "LA and Ibaka always get into it lol."
LaMarcus Aldridge and Serge Ibaka had been jockeying to position themselves for a rebound with the Spurs up by five before Danny Green sunk a hook shot to give San Antonio a seven-point lead with 3:37 left on the clock in the fourth quarter. Rather than begin their transition down to the other end of the court, however, the rival big-men got rough. Ibaka bumped Aldridge and Aldridge pushed Ibaka, prompting their respective teams to rush over and separate them. The altercation may have gotten the AT&T center pumping with cheers, but it also sent the refs to the scoring board to record a double technical.
The skirmish comes nearly three years after Ibaka (who was with the Thunder) and Aldridge (who back then wore a Blazers uniform) wrestled around in a much more physical manner, after competing for a rebound. That altercation saw Ibaka and Aldridge tangle and nearly rush one another into the front row seats of the arena.
Source: slamonline.com
