‘It might have been uglier’ – The Athletic

DENVER — Nikola Jokic gathered, took three full steps, lowered his head as if he was a raging bull of Pamplona, and skewered Markieff Morris within the again with a devastating swing of his proper forearm and shoulder.

Morris’ head snapped again as he crumpled to the Denver court docket. He instantly clutched his brow, and whereas the melee continued among the many Nuggets and Heat gamers who nonetheless had the nice fortune of standing upright, a stretcher was summoned for Morris, who was nonetheless on the bottom.

The Warmth’s medical staff, and on-site paramedics, tended to Morris for a number of minutes, and luckily for him, after which for Jokic, Morris obtained to his toes and walked gingerly to the locker room with the assistance of a few teammates. Miami checked him for a neck damage.

It doesn’t matter who gained or misplaced the sport, or the rating. Neither wheelchairs nor manslaughter costs have been essential, however past that, an unpleasant, unhappy, infuriating and complicated scene through which the league’s reigning MVP hit a man who wasn’t looking from behind so laborious that he probably would have been ejected had he carried out the identical factor within the NFL.