110-104<\/a>.<\/p>\nDuren had the ball and was driving toward the basket with just over seven minutes left in the third period when he was fouled by Diabate. Duren turned around to get face-to-face with Diabate and the two appeared to butt heads. Duren then hit Diabate in the face with his open right hand, starting a confrontation that lasted more than 30 seconds and ultimately ended with a brief police presence on the floor.<\/p>\n
While Pistons forward Tobias Harris was holding Diabate back, Diabate threw a punch at Duren. Duren walked away and Bridges charged at him, throwing a left-handed punch. Duren retaliated with a punch. Diabate attempted to charge again at Duren and had to be held back.<\/p>\n
Stewart left the bench to confront Bridges, who responded with a punch, and the players tussled. At one point, Stewart got Bridges in a headlock and delivered mutiple left-handed blows to his head.<\/p>\n
Duren called it an \u201coverly competitive game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEmotions were flaring,\u201d Duren said. \u201cAt the end of the day, we would love to keep it basketball, but things happen. Everybody was just playing hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duren said that opposing NBA teams have been trying to \u201cget in our head\u201d all season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t the first time that people have tried to be like extra aggressive with us and talk to us, whatever the case may be,\u201d Duren said. \u201cBut as a group we have done an OK job of handling that energy and intensity. At the end of the day, emotions got high with everybody being competitive. Things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duren did not say how the fight started, referring the video replay instead.<\/p>\n
The Hornets did not make Bridges and Diabate available for interviews after the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looked like two guys got into a heated conversation and it just kind of spiraled from there,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n
Crew chief John Goble said in a pool report after the game that the players were ejected because they \u201cengaged in fighting activity during the dead ball. After review, we assessed fighting fouls and by rule they were ejected from the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff defended his players after the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur guys deal with a lot, but they\u2019re not the ones that initiated, they\u2019re not the ones who crossed the line tonight,\u201d Bickerstaff said. \u201cIt was clear, through frustration, because of what J.D. (Duren) was doing, that they crossed the line. I hate that it got as ugly as it got.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not something that you ever want to see,\u201d Bickerstaff added, \u201cbut if a guy throws a punch at you, you have a responsibility to protect yourself. That\u2019s what happened tonight. If you go back and watch the film, they\u2019re the ones who initiated crossing the line and our guy had to defend himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tensions continued to mount at the Spectrum Center after the fight.<\/p>\n
Midway through the fourth quarter, Lee was ejected and had to be held restrained by Hornets guard Brandon Miller while yelling at officials for a no-call after Charlotte\u2019s Grant Williams collided with Detroit\u2019s Paul Reed.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrant was walking down the paint and barely touched somebody and the guy fell over and that is what we are going to call a foul,\u201d Lee said. \u201cThey have a hard job to make these calls, but I don\u2019t think that was the consistency with had been called the rest of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for being ejected, Lee said he has to have more control of emotions moving forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four players were ejected following a fracas between the Pistons and Hornets on Monday. CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) \u2014\u00a0A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3777],"tags":[7,684,473,3878,685,6,79551],"class_list":{"0":"post-593980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-charlotte-hornets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-charlotte","10":"tag-charlotte-hornets","11":"tag-charlottehornets","12":"tag-hornets","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-pistons-hornets-fight"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116044684157938998","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages_tempers.jpg\")
<\/p>\n