A veteran of 1,072 NBA games, Vince Carter certainly doesn’t like being elbowed in the head by rookies. But when the veteran tried to teach Steven Adams a lesson Wednesday night, all Carter received was an early shower.
During a game between Dallas and Oklahoma City, Adams, a first-round draft pick of the Thunder who has seen an NBA floor a grand total of four times, inadvertently clipped Carter with an elbow as he was maneuvering near the baseline. No foul was called on the play, and a ticked-off Carter responded by throwing an elbow right back in the face of Adams, who no longer had the ball.
The refs never miss the retaliation, and Carter was assessed a flagrant-2 foul and ejected from the game, which his Mavericks went on to lose 107-93. Afterward, the 16th-year pro apologized for letting his emotions get the best of him.
“More than anything, I just want to apologize to the fans of both sides,” Carter said, according to ESPN.com. “You know there’s no need for it. They’re already trying to clean up the game of basketball, make it fun for fans to watch. It’s just one of those things where you’re caught up in the moment of a big game, whatever, whatever and you react to a reaction that was done to you.”
See the exchange between Carter and Adams in the video below.
