5 Suspensions That Shook Up the NBA Playoffs

It’s something about Draymond Green that the league’s refs hate. Maybe it’s the notoriety gained from his reputation as one of the biggest trash talkers, or maybe it's his tendency to go after other players, specifically in areas below the belt. But Green was officially fouled out of Game 5 of the NBA Finals Sunday in a controversial decision by the league to suspend him. Golden State will be without its power forward, who will watch the game from across the street, and his absence could have major implications.

Of course this isn’t the first time a suspension has drastically affected a playoff series. Green’s four flagrant fouls actually seem fairly tame compared to some of the transgressions that have left team’s without their star players in the past. While the lack of Green probably won’t have nearly as much of an impact as some of the other examples we've outline here because, well, the Warriors have a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals and no team has ever comeback from that deficit before. But you never know. Here are five other examples of suspensions that have impacted playoff series over the past 25 years. 

The Offense: Your own mother has never looked at you with the shock or sheer disappointment that covered the face of NBA commissioner David Stern while he watched from feet away as the Knicks and the Bulls got it on during Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. It’s not completely clear what started the tussle between the Bulls’ Jo Jo English and the Knicks’ Derek Harper, but the altercation became a team-wide brawl that overtook the first few rows of the stands.  

The Aftermath: The implications were a little uneven. English, an overall irrelevant player who barely made it off the bench as a Bull, was suspended for one game, while Harper would miss the next two games. The Knicks didn’t have many options replacing Harper and after losing on a Tony Kukoc buzzer-beater in Game 3, dropped Game 4 with Greg Anthony running the point. The Knicks still managed to win the overall series in seven and advance to the NBA Finals over the Jordan-less Bulls. If this had happened during the years of the “immediate vicinity” to the bench rule, there would be no players to put on the court for the remaining games...from either team.

The Offense: And continuing the whole teammate reactions resulting in worse consequences than the foul itself theme, we have Game 5 of the 1997 Eastern Conference Semifinals. In a play that lit up Miami’s home arena, the Heat’s P.J. Brown flipped and nearly body slammed Charlie Ward into the front row of photographers. What ensued was a human dogpile of players—mainly Knicks players—fighting for their beloved teammate.

The Aftermath: In what became one of the most severe penalties ever handed down, five Knicks players, along with Brown, were suspended for a total of seven games. The NBA’s intense reaction was an attempt to tell everybody in the league to cool it with the brawls, which had started to pop up more and more, and was always on the brink when the Knicks and Heat met during their intense 90s rivalry. But it wasn’t just the number of players suspended, as much as it was the people suspended that ended up hurting the Knicks so badly. Both Patrick Ewing and Allan Houston, the team’s top two scorers, were suspended for leaving the bench.

The Knicks tried to strategically space out the suspensions, but when you’re missing four starters and a backup point guard, it’s nearly impossible to overcome the losses. Ewing and Houston sat out Game 6, then Larry Johnson and John Starks sat out Game 7. Despite a 3-2 series lead going into Game 6, the Knicks dropped two straight and were eliminated, preventing another Bulls-Knicks Eastern Conference Finals matchup.

The Offense: If this list has proved anything, it’s that the 90s were a beautiful wasteland of rivalrous brawls in the NBA, and a lot of the time it was New York and Miami who were involved. Former Charlotte Hornets teammates Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson got into it at the end of Game 4, just a year after the fight that got five Knicks suspended in a semifinals face off. In this case, Mourning and Johnson swung at each other for about 15 seconds without either one of them actually making contact with each other’s face. As one commentator can be heard saying, “Luckily for these guys, they are both awful fighters.” And in a moment of pure TV magic, Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy clung to Mourning’s leg in a failed attempt to somehow quell the madness.

The Aftermath:The fight resulted in the two’s suspension for Game 5, along with Knick’s Chris Mills, who also got himself involved. But unlike the 1997 Knicks suspension disaster, the Heat felt the pain this time. Mourning had become irreplaceable after the Heat traded center Ike Austin, who would’ve been his backup. In the end, the Knicks won Game 5 by a healthy 17 points, and in some ways evened the suspension score.

The Offense: It was Game 4 of the Western Conference semifinals. With the Spurs down by three with 18 seconds left in the fourth, Robert Horry “strategically” fouled the Sun’s Steve Nash. But decking somebody into the scorer’s table is definitely not what it takes to get a simple foul called in the NBA. The Suns held on to win Game 4 and tie the series at two games apiece, but the series was irrevocably changed.

The Aftermath: It wasn’t Horry or the Spurs who felt the impact of this play. Amaré Stoudemire and Boris Diaw also somehow received suspensions for “leaving the immediate vicinity of their bench,” which is among the most frustrating suspension and controversial decisions in NBA history.  While they each only received a one game suspension, the absence of the pair put the Suns at a huge disadvantage in Game 5—they tried somewhat of a six-man rotation and actually did fairly well for the majority of the game, but just couldn’t quite do it without their All-NBA center. As Spurs guard Manu Ginobili described it to the Washington Post, “They were playing like hurt animals.” The hipcheck cost Horry the final two games of the series, but the Spurs didn’t need him in the end, prematurely ending what could have been Nash’s best shot at a ring.

The Offense: Steven Adams’ face and manhood really just can’t catch a break. During his rookie season, Adams was involved in a decent amount of scuffles. He obviously had a large part in Draymond Green’s suspension this year, but he also was on the receiving end of the weird weak afterthought punch that got the Grizzlies’ Zach Randolph suspended in 2014.

The Aftermath: As the team’s top scorer, averaging 18.2 points per game during the series, the Grizzlies season pretty much ended the second Randolph’s fist made contact with Adams’ jaw—or maybe more accurately, his neck. Game 7 was a home game for the Thunder, so the lack of Randolph just gave Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook even more of an opportunity to go off. The only small glimmer of hope for the Grizzlies going into final game was the return of their best defender Tony Allen, but Durant got the better of that matchup. The Thunder advanced with a 120-109 win.