First came the boos, then the back-and-forth, some shoving and an accusation of having “no class.”
An otherwise mundane Wednesday night win by the mighty Cavaliers over the lowly Raptors in Toronto delivered some juicy postgame content after Tristan Thompson dunked with 4.1 seconds remaining and the Cavaliers nursing a 21-point lead in their 131-108 win.
“What Tristan did there was no class and disrespectful,” Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic said after falling to 17-38. “I’m not going to stand for that, for sure. I’m really glad our guys, our players, from Jamal (Shead), he was on the court, and Scottie (Barnes) and everybody else, they stood up for themselves. I love when my team stands up for themselves. That was no class act.”
Thompson, in his 15th year in the league, seemingly should have known better than to take the gimme dunk with the Raptors having waived the white flag in a blowout.
Instead, while facing little resistance from Toronto’s defenders, he drove the hoop and rose for a dunk, which immediately elicited some boos.
Thompson walked toward his bench before turning around and heading back in the direction of several Raptors, with Shead, a rookie from Houston, jawing at him.
“What he did at the end of the game was just a little bit disrespectful to the game of basketball, not just us,” Shead said, per ESPN. “We had a couple of choice words. We’re adults, we’ll move on from it.”
Several Raptors then came over — including Barnes — and pushed Thompson away and even Rajakovic got the middle of the mini-fracas, yelling at the veteran big man.
A Cavaliers staffer and a referee eventually pushed Thompson away.
Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena has the same entrance for both teams, which resulted in Thompson waiting a little bit while the opposing and upset players left the court.
“It’s kind of an unwritten rule to not do that at the end,” former Knicks star R.J. Barrett — now with the Raptors — said, per ESPN. “Jamal did what he’s supposed to.”
Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson didn’t have any explanation for Thompson’s actions.
Thompson finished with four points in four minutes, and is averaging 1.7 points across 28 games.
“I’m not sure what he was thinking,” Atkinson said. “Sometimes, though, you’re playing the game and you just have a reaction. I know with Tristan, there’s no bad intention there. I think just sometimes you’re playing and the goal of the game is to score. Just made a layup. Unfortunate.”
The Cavaliers enter the All-Star break with the best record in the Eastern Conference at 44-10, sitting 5 1/2 games ahead of the reigning champion Celtics.
