The Bucks and Nets found themselves in a rock fight on Thursday, with Milwaukee taking an early 30-9 lead before letting Brooklyn cut the deficit to just 45-42 at the half.
Neither offense could hit shots with any consistency as the two defenses were each doing a good job forcing contested looks and playing physically. That naturally created some frustrations on both sides, and as the game wore on things got a bit chippy. That peaked in the third quarter when a pair of former Texas Longhorns got tangled, as Kevin Durant and PJ Tucker came face to face to have words from a very close proximity after Tucker got called with a reach-in that was pretty obvious but he took issue with.
That Tucker and Durant got into it, earning a offsetting technicals, wasn’t much of a thing until the team security personnel arrived and managed to escalate the situation rather than diffuse it, with the Nets security guard barreling into Tucker and pushing him for no real reason.
Kevin Durant and PJ Tucker got right into each other’s faces. pic.twitter.com/wB4IvtAUxv
— ESPN (@espn) June 11, 2021
That happened as everything was dying down and set Tucker off further, as his teammates had to calm him down and get him away from the situation. It was not a situation that needed a whole lot of breaking up beyond what the refs had already done and it’s not great that security made the situation worse by literally running through one of the players in question. The two sides moved on quickly and there were no other shenanigans in the quarter, but it might be time for a bit more deescalation training for the security guys because “running through one of the players” isn’t the best practice.