INDIANAPOLIS — After their Jan. 16 game ended with lots of heated conversation and posturing, the Pacers and Pistons are already going at it and have already drawn double technical fouls and one player has been ejected.
Pistons center Isaiah Stewart — who made fun of Pacers center Myles Turner for his Lego-building hobby in the last verbal skirmish — got into it with Pacers veteran James Johnson Jr., known around the NBA as the guy no one wants to fight. Stewart and Johnson were assessed double technical fouls. The incident came with 3:32 to play in the first quarter and the Pacers leading 31-22.
Later in the second quarter, Stewart hit Pacers big man with a forearm to the chest and knocked him over. Stewart was immediately sent to the Pistons’ bench and Bryant got up ready to get after him but was held back. Officials ruled that the action involved a wind-up and was an unnecessary action and therefore a Flagrant 2 foul, leading to Stewart’s ejection. He was booed heartily on his way off the floor. Ben Sheppard seemed to wave goodbye to him as he was leaving and Stewart pointed out him forcefully as he entered the tunnel to the visitor’s locker room.
The Pistons’ Cade Cunningham then drew a technical with 7:06 to play in the second quarter. Myles Turner drew one with 4:02 to go in the third quarter when Pistons guard Malik Beasley bumped into him and Turner grabbed him and held him and exchanged words with him.
Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff got another technical foul with 5:58 to go in the fourth quarter for arguing a call. Tim Hardaway Jr. got called for a technical with 3:20 to go in the fourth.
No one on either side was interested in divulging the details to the media of the first dust up, except to say that it was a product of an old Central Division rivalry that’s getting its juice back.Â
“It wasn’t no malice or anything crazy like that,” Pacers center Myles Turner said, possibly but not clearly referencing the Malice at the Palace brawl involving the Pacers in a game against the Pistons in 2004. “It was just competitive talk. It’s a team that’s on the rise, a team that we’re gonna see in the future. It was just good-spirited stuff, man. I think that’s the beauty of this game. You go out there and compete and you talk a little bit and you go out and back it up too.”