The NBA suspended Houston Rockets guard Marcus Smart for three games after he punched Golden State Warriors center Charles Bassey during the Rockets’ 115-108 win on Wednesday night.
Smart threw the punch in the third quarter, before teammates separated the two players. He was called for a flagrant 2 foul and ejected. The league announced the suspension on Thursday, and Bleacher Report first reported the three-game term.
Smart will sit out the Rockets’ next three games and lose $125,462 in salary. He is eligible to return against the Indiana Pacers on Nov. 18. The Rockets lose a perimeter defender who was a three-time All-Defensive Team selection.
The sequence started on a rebound. Smart confronted Bassey about wrapping up his elbow, and Bassey replied, “What you gonna do?” Smart answered with the punch, Rockets coach Ime Udoka said, per the Houston Chronicle.
Udoka said: “Refs didn’t say anything. I didn’t see it but I just talked to Marcus. He said they got wrapped up, and his elbow that he had hurt got bent up. So he said something to him, and Bassey said, ‘What you going to do?’ And he did it.”
Bassey had his own account. “He’s been playing dirty the whole game, man,” he said, per Yahoo Sports. “I don’t think he was trying to play. I think he was trying to get himself out of the game. He wasn’t trying to play, because if he was trying to play, you don’t do that bro. I think he was trying to chill. He wasn’t trying to hoop, bro. Like I said, man, that was fake. Fake toughness.”
NBC Sports Bay Area covered the suspension from the Warriors’ side. It was unclear from the replay whether the punch made contact. The NBA rulebook does not require it. Any player who throws a punch has committed an unsportsmanlike act and faces a minimum one-game suspension.
A veteran with a history
Smart is the 2022 Defensive Player of the Year. He was suspended one game in 2021 for language directed at an official and one game in 2015 for striking former San Antonio Spurs center Matt Bonner in the groin. This season he is averaging 8.3 points, 2.6 rebounds and 2.0 assists, and he was 2-for-2 from three-point range in 17 minutes on Wednesday.
Bassey is in his first full year with the Warriors after playing for four teams last season. He came into the game averaging 7.6 points and 5.7 rebounds. The same night, the Warriors lost Curry to an injury in the first quarter, and the Rockets snapped the Warriors’ winning streak with the 115-108 win.
How long is Marcus Smart suspended?
Three games. He will miss the Rockets’ next three games and is eligible to return against the Indiana Pacers on Nov. 18. The suspension costs him $125,462.
The Rockets move on without Smart for three games. The Warriors, already short-handed without Curry, finished the night on the losing end of a 115-108 game. Both teams play again this week.
