After Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s historic 64-point performance against the Pacers, he was expecting to take the game ball home. However, one of Indiana‘s assistant coaches took the ball away from him because he wanted to handed over to rookie Oscar Tshiebwe, who scored his first points in the NBA.
This resulted in a heated argument with the Pacers players after the Bucks beat them 140-126 on Wednesday night. Giannis, who set a new franchise record last night, ran furiously into the opponent’s locker room in hopes of retrieving the game ball.
According to the power forward, he didn’t even want the ball for himself, as he wanted to honor his teammate Damian Lillard, who passed Kyle Korver to enter the Top 5 all-time three-pointers list. Take a look at the situation in the video below and judge it yourselves:
Giannis and Haliburton had heated exchange following Bucks-Pacers 😳
It involved Pacers taking game ball away after Giannis’ 64-point game pic.twitter.com/zsSGraLQVi
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) December 14, 2023
“I understand. When you score your first point in the NBA, you want to have the ball or whatever the case may be,” Giannis told reporters after the contest. “But at the end of the day, you’re talking about the guy that just skipped Kyle Korver in the all-time list. In my opinion, we should all stop what we’re doing and appreciate greatness.”
According to The Greek Freak, neither side really knows who ended up with the real game ball. After the match, he told the press he doesn’t believe he received the correct one, while Indiana coach Rick Carlisle assured that they have the reserve ball.
“I have no idea. I’m not going to lie,” Antetokounmpo shared. “I really don’t know. I have a ball, but I don’t know if it’s the game ball. It doesn’t feel like the game ball to me. It feels like a brand-new ball. I can tell. I played, what, 35 minutes today. I know how the game ball felt. The ball that I have, which I’ll take and I’ll give it to my mom, for sure — but I don’t know if it’s actually the game ball.”
The Milwaukee star ended the match with 64 points, 14 rebounds, 3 assists and 4 steals, now holding the record for most points scored in a single game for the franchise, who used to be in former All-Star Michael Redd’s possession with 57.
Coach Rick Carlisle said the whole situation was “unfortunate” and explained what happened from Indiana’s perspective
During the Pacers’ postgame interview, head coach Rick Carlisle called the brawl “unfortunate” and a huge misunderstanding.
“There was a misunderstanding about the game ball. It was Oscar Tshiebwe’s first official NBA point, so we always get the game ball. We were not thinking about Giannis’ franchise record. So we grabbed the ball, and a couple of minutes later, several of their players ended up in our hallway,” the trainer revealed.
Another interesting point that Carlisle pointed out was the fact that there were two balls anyway, and all the discussions around this incident were unnecessary.
“We don’t need the official game ball. There are two game balls there. We could have taken the other one. It didn’t need to escalate to that,” explained the Indiana coach.
