Marcus Smart Ejected for Punching Charles Bassey in Rockets' Win Over Warriors

Marcus Smart lasted 16 minutes on Wednesday night, and his evening ended with a punch, an ejection and a walk to the locker room before the officials had even announced what he had done. The Houston Rockets guard threw a right hook at Golden State Warriors centre Charles Bassey with 21 seconds left in the third quarter, and the officials reviewed it, ruled it a flagrant 2 and sent him off. Houston still won 115-108. What happens next is the NBA’s decision, and Smart’s history means it will not be a quick formality.

What happened between Smart and Bassey?

A tangle under the basket turned into a punch in front of the referee. The two got wrapped up fighting for a rebound after Rockets guard Amen Thompson had barreled to the rim for a transition bucket that stretched Houston’s lead, ESPN reports. They stood face to face jawing as Warriors forward Yaxel Lendeborg tried to separate them, and then Smart threw a right hook that grazed Bassey’s nose as Bassey stepped back to slip it. The incident happened right in front of referee Mitchell Ervin. Thompson, Golden State’s Gui Santos and Brandin Podziemski moved in to separate the players along with referee Brandon Adair, and after a review Ervin announced the flagrant 2 for contact to the nose. Smart did not wait for the announcement. He headed straight to the locker room, which is its own kind of admission: he knew what the review would say.

Why did Smart throw the punch?

That depends on which player you believe, and the two versions agree only on the tangle. Smart did not speak to reporters, but coach Ime Udoka relayed his version after the game. Udoka said Smart’s previously injured elbow got bent as the two got wrapped up, so Smart said something to Bassey, and Bassey replied, “What you gonna do?” Udoka’s summary of what followed was blunt: “And he did it.” Bassey tells it the other way round. He said Smart had been playing dirty the whole game, grabbing his knee on a screen in the first half and grabbing his hand as he tried to run back on defence, and then just swung. The elbow and the knee are the same incident seen from opposite ends, and the league’s investigators will have to decide which one explains a punch thrown in front of a referee. Rick Carlisle opened his own press conference this week demanding someone ask about a final-play no-call, so the league is already fielding one coach’s complaint about its officials before it rules on a player who punched one of theirs in plain sight.

What did Bassey say afterwards?

He called it fake toughness, twice. Bassey told reporters in Houston that Smart’s punch did not surprise him, that he did not think Smart was trying to play, and that he believed Smart was trying to get himself out of the game. “Obviously, that was weak,” Bassey said, per ESPN. “I just think that was, honestly, fake toughness.” The charge underneath the insult is that the punch was not heat-of-the-moment but a way out of a game Smart did not want to finish, which is a harsher accusation than the punch itself. Bassey stayed in the game and was not disciplined for his part in the incident, USA Today reports. The contrast matters: one player left under escort, the other finished the game and then gave the quote that will follow Smart into the league office.

What happens to Smart now?

The league decides, and the calendar gives it a deadline. The Associated Press reports Smart could face a fine or a suspension pending the NBA’s investigation into the circumstances, and the Rockets next play on Friday, so a ruling is almost certain by then if the league deems one warranted. Every flagrant 2 is reviewed by the league office, and the review will weigh the two versions of the tangle against Smart’s record. Wednesday was his 13th career ejection and his first since the 2023-24 season with Memphis, ESPN reports. The Associated Press adds the rest of the file: a one-game suspension in 2015 for hitting San Antonio’s Matt Bonner in the groin, a one-game suspension in 2021 for threatening language toward an official, and fines on at least 12 other occasions, including a $50,000 fine for shoving Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid in 2019 after what the league called repeated acts of unsportsmanlike conduct. A first-time offender might get a fine. A 13-time ejectee with that file does not get the benefit of the doubt.

How did the game end without him?

Houston held on, and the punch did not change the result. Smart finished with six points on 2-of-2 shooting, both from three-point range, with two rebounds and one assist in his 16 minutes. The Rockets won 115-108 without their veteran guard for the whole fourth quarter, which says something about how little the punch cost them on the night and how much it might cost them on Friday. Smart, 32, joined Houston in free agency over the summer and is averaging 8.6 points, 2.6 rebounds and 1.1 steals over nine games with one start. The Rockets signed him for exactly this kind of edge, the veteran who does the dirty work in a young rotation, and on Wednesday the edge went too far in front of a referee. Jalen Brunson found out earlier this preseason how quickly the league’s new emphasis turns a shove into a whistle, and Dillon Brooks and John Collins were scuffling five minutes into a preseason opener before either team had found its rhythm, so the early season has already set a pattern of physical games drawing fast punishment.

What happens next?

Friday, and the league’s ruling before it. If Smart is suspended, Reed Sheppard should get more minutes in his place, NBC Sports notes, and the Rockets will have to defend their record without the guard they signed to steady the second unit. If he is only fined, the story becomes the quote rather than the punishment: Bassey’s fake-toughness line will travel further than the flagrant 2, and the next Rockets-Warriors meeting will carry it. Either way, the punch is now the second incident in a week in which a player has accused the league’s officiating of missing the real story, after Nikola Jokic took the technical in a preseason shoving match that started the other way. Smart’s case is simpler than those. He threw a punch, the referee saw it, and the review agreed. The only question left is what the league does with a 13th ejection.

November 12 note: The other incident in the same game

Stephen Curry walked off with an oblique abdominal tear 5:35 into the same Rockets-Warriors game, and will miss at least two weeks, an injury that ended Golden State’s eight-game winning streak before Smart’s punch ended the night’s discipline. The punch is the story this article covers; the injury is the one that will decide the Warriors’ next two weeks.