Bad blood between Clippers, Warriors spills into hallway altercation after Game 7
LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors entered their first-round playoff series with a lot of talk about how much they hate each other. They were still jawing at each other even after it ended, with police and other security personnel summoned to calm down a hallway altercation between the teams after the Clippers' series-clinching 126-121 Game 7 victory on Saturday night.
"It was a crazy scene," a source who witnessed the incident told Yahoo Sports.
After the game ended, the Warriors thought they heard a Clippers assistant coach yell, "It's a little quiet in there," several times outside their locker room, multiple sources said. Warriors guards Stephen Curry and Steve Blake were the first to dart from the locker room and confronted some Clippers ball boys in the hallway between both locker rooms, a source said. The Warriors' coaching staff and players followed Curry and Blake into the hallway where they also confronted Clippers staff members and some players, including forward Glen Davis, sources said.
Jeremiah Rivers, the son of Clippers coach Doc Rivers, said on Twitter that Warriors center Marreese Speights "barged into" the Clippers' locker room, but that was not confirmed. He later deleted the tweet. Another source said Davis and Speights yelled at each other with Speights having to be held back. No punches were thrown, but a lot of screaming took place. The Los Angeles Police Department and game security calmed the situation, a source said.
Between postgame news conferences, Clippers coach Doc Rivers stopped Warriors coach Mark Jackson for a private conversation in the locker room hallway. It's uncertain if they were talking about the incident. The bad blood between the teams included a chippy Christmas game; the Clippers deciding to have separate pregame chapel services from the Warriors; Warriors center Jermaine O'Neal and Clippers forward Blake Griffin engaging in a shouting match after a game; and Rivers and Jackson making multiple snide remarks toward one another during the playoff series.
The fallout from the racist comments made by Clippers owner Donald Sterling and uncertainty over Jackson's future with the Warriors only heightened the drama in the series, which produced thrilling basketball and went the maximum seven games.
