Doc Rivers Called Montrezl Harrell And Dwight Howard ‘Clowns’ After Their Shoving Match Got Dwight Tossed

In a battle of shorthanded teams broadcast on national television, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Los Angeles Lakers matched up on Thursday evening. The 76ers were without Joel Embiid and the recently traded Tony Bradley, the Lakers were without both LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Marc Gasol, but the two teams were competitive in the early going, to the point where two prominent players got into a scuffle that landed one in the locker room with an ejection.

Lakers big man Montrezl Harrell and 76ers big man Dwight Howard got into it late in the first quarter with some shoving and apparent trash talk. The end result of the first scuffle was a technical foul assed to both parties but, less than 70 seconds of game time later, the first quarter buzzer sounded and things rekindled, with Howard being ejected after walking into Harrell.

Some of the frustration could have been traced to a very impressive block by Howard on Harrell just a few moments earlier.

Still, this was an extended back-and-forth that spanned across mini-incidents. In fact, TNT’s Brian Anderson can be heard on the video above predicting that “these two are gonna be a thing the rest of the night.”

Ultimately, Howard’s ejection led the already size-challenged 76ers to play without much of an interior presence. That, and much more, was highlighted when Philadelphia head coach Doc Rivers joined TNT for a post-first quarter interview and called Howard and Harrell “clowns” for the way things transpired.

It didn’t seem as if Rivers was totally enraged, but he did acknowledge that Howard’s absence left the 76ers in a tough spot. As such, one could argue that Harrell and the Lakers got the best of things, but the two bigs provide some fireworks that perhaps added more intrigue to the proceedings of an otherwise strange game without all of the star power involved.