THINGS got heated after the Houston’s 123-107 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday night (Wednesday, Manila time) after an on-court spat turned personal that saw the Rockets’ Trevor Ariza wait outside the Mavs dugout for center Salah Mejri.
A source told ESPN’s Calvin Watkins that Ariza was out to confront Mejri his derogatory comments made on the Rockets wingman’s wife and kids entering the fourth quarter. They then traded barbs and the referees handed Ariza his second technical of the game, which got him ejected.
Ariza waited for Mejri outside the Mavs locker room, along with teammates James Harden, Patrick Beverley and Eric Gordon, while Dallas police officers and security guards at the American Airlines Center monitored the situation.
Mavericks point guard Deron Williams tried to keep the peace between his teammate and spoke to Ariza, who left without speaking to reporters after waiting for 15 minutes.
On his part, Mejri saying anything about Ariza's family but didn’t confront the Rockets forward after the game even as he knew of the group of players waiting for him out of the locker room.
"He was swearing and bull---," Mejri told ESPN. "Ask him. He's out there. Ask him."
Aside from the ejection, the game resulted in eight technical fouls and two flagrant fouls against the Mavericks. Harden admitted to getting fired up in delivering the blowout win after getting some hard shots, notably from Dallas center Andrew Bogut.
"I don't know what they were on tonight," Harden said. "That other team was tripping tonight. They were disrespectful, were unprofessional players and coaches. I don't know what was their problem, but I think that got us going. They wanted to throw a little cheap shot and just woke us up a little bit and it was over from there."
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