Elimination Game 4 between the Denver Nuggets and the Phoenix Suns on Sunday was quite the spirited affair. In the midst of a close game — with the Nuggets needing a win or their season would be over — league MVP Nikola Jokic was ejected after an extremely confrontational dust-up with Cameron Payne.
Jokic’s night was ended after accruing a flagrant 2 in the third quarter, where in an attempt to knock the ball loose from Payne, the NBA’s MVP winner got his opponent’s face instead on the hard hit. The Nuggets and Suns got testy on the court in the aftermath of the play and then Jokic was ejected after a review deemed his swat to have “wind-up, impact and follow-through.”
Here’s how the play went down, with less than four minutes left in the third.
Jokic got ejected after this hard foul on Payne 😯 pic.twitter.com/EvG1Dfvuub
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) June 14, 2021
To say Jokic’s ejection went down poorly with fans, media members, and even other athletes is… an understatement. Though the majority of the outrage came from the disbelief that Jokic was tossed in such a crucial time in the game, there were people that believed the ejection was warranted.
