World Peace Ejected

In a great matchup of two playoff teams, James Harden got the brunt of the emotion. The Los Angeles Lakers took on the Oklahoma City Thunder this afternoon that turned into a double overtime win for the Lakers. However, one play was all that people are talking about that occurred much earlier in the game. Metta World Peace, the player formerly known as Ron Artest, got the ball on a fast break and dunked on Kevin Durant and Serge Ibaka to bring his team within one.

Naturally, he was excited as are most NBA players when they do something that looks humanly impossible by someone who is not a professional athlete. While showing his excitement, he accidentally elbowed James Harden and he collapsed to the ground. Of course it was completely unintentional, but it looked pretty bad when Harden did not get up for a few seconds.

After the referees watched the video playback of the elbow, they decided to eject World Peace after giving him a flagrant foul. While I do understand somewhat why he was ejected, I do think that if they are going to eject him for something like that then they need to start throwing others out as well. I mean players are coming forward complaining about the hard fouls which are done on purpose so why aren’t more players being ejected?

Personally, I do not agree that he should have been tossed because he clearly did not see Harden there and did not intentionally go after him. World Peace did the classy thing and released this statement, “”During that play I just dunked on (Kevin) Durant and (Serge) Ibaka and I got really emotional and excited and it was unfortunate that James had to get hit with an unintentional elbow. I hope he’s OK. The Thunder, they’re playing for a championship this year, so I hope that he’s OK and I apologize to the Thunder and to James Harden.”