Story By: Sol Tucker
Photos By: Sol Tucker
Washington, D.C–
In a tail of two teams going in the opposite direction, today’s game was anything, but what you would have expected… well other than a possible loss by the Wizards. It was the “brawl” with less than a minute before the half that changed the game.
After an initial fracas along the baseline between Thunder forward Jaylin Williams and Wizards forward Justin Champagnie, it was the actions by Champagnie that seemed to incite the remainder of the Wizards and Thunder players to go at it and the 25 seconds remaining seemed to last as long as the halftime.
Wizards forward Anthony Gill and Thunder guard Cason Wallace got involved, making contact with players in the scrum.
Williams and Champagnie were each assessed two technical fouls, receiving automatic ejections.
Mitchell and Wallace each received a single technical and were ejected “for not acting as peacemakers and escalating the altercation,” crew chief John Goble said after the game in a statement regarding the incident.
Prior to the scrum between both teams, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 6 points, four of those came from forced errors. This was just part of his run to 40 points tonight which also extended his NBA record of 63 consecutive road games with at least 20 points.
Washington continues their downward spiral toward the end of the season but did get some solid play from Bilal Coulibaly who scored 21 points and Bub Carrington added 19.
With the loss today the Wizards one game from matching a franchise-worst skid of 16 consecutive losses, which happened most recently in March 2024.
