Horford ejected from game 3

Yesterday at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, the Cavaliers faced the Hawks for game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

In the final seconds of the first half, Atlanta Hawks center, Al Hordford threw an elbow at Cavaliers guard Matthew Dellavedova. This occurrence resulted in a bit of a tussle for the rebound. The replays showed Dellavedova fell into Horford’s leg, with the risk of injury, after the fall all retaliation seen as a dirty play. Dellavedova was given a technical foul, and Horford received a flagrant-2 foul, triggering an automatic ejection from the game.

The refs call was automatically a frenzy of controversy. Some may say that the Cavs guard is an instigator or rather more likely to cause an event such as this over Horford, but others see the justice in the circumstances. There is little evidence that Dellavedova had caused any instigation, but regardless of Dellavedova’s past as a pest, Horford very well may have allowed him to be successful with this move, which caused the elbow action. Officials have been fairly consistent in ejecting players for poor sportsmanship actions like this one, so the ejection cannot come as much of a surprise even if there appears to be some reason behind what Horford did. The reasoning is not what matters to the officials but rather the actions played out within the game. No one goes to a basketball game to see players dual it out elbow to elbow (ok maybe a few but we’re not talking about the Lakers games).

Although this upset changed the game, the Cavaliers were victorious: 114-111 in overtime.