Report: Evan Turner, Lance Stephenson fought each other on eve of playoffs
Tuesday night saw the Indiana Pacers level their first-round series against the Atlanta Hawks at 1-1 with a 101-85 home win.
It was a vast improvement on the Pacers' performance in Game 1, where fans left in droves midway through the fourth quarter, and those who stayed to watch Indiana lose 101-93 booed loudly.
Amid reports of a hostile locker room, the loss was emblematic of a team that's on the verge of collapse. But after reading Adrian Wojnarowski's latest report, it appears as though Indiana's collapse may have started before the playoffs got underway.
Per Yahoo! Sports:
On the eve of this Eastern Conference series, the wobbling No. 1 seed punctuated its final playoff preparations in a most self-destructive way: Two Indiana Pacers dragged a cursing, cut Evan Turner out of the Bankers Life Fieldhouse court, untangling him from a practice-floor fistfight with teammate Lance Stephenson.
Turner hadn't been the first Pacer to lose his temper with Stephenson these tumultuous several weeks, and Stephenson's relentlessly irritable nature suggests Turner won't be the last. These scrapes aren't uncommon in the NBA, but this confrontation had been weeks in the making and that reflected in the ferocity of the encounter, sources told Yahoo Sports.
Turner, who insists "nothing happened" at Friday's practice has struggled to play alongside Stephenson since being traded from the Philadelphia 76ers at the trade deadline. The Ohio State product is unaccustomed to playing without the ball after being the focal point of the offense in Philly, while Stephenson has seemingly lost his ability to impact a game like he could at the beginning of the season.
"We've been on the ropes a little bit," said David West on Tuesday. "Every team goes through that. But I thought we did a great job of dealing with whatever issues we had. The great thing about this group has always been that we're very open with one another, always been able to get through the ups and downs of a long NBA season."
If Larry Bird has anything to say about it, the Pacers had better be able to "get through the ups and downs." A first-round playoff exit will have Bird contemplating Frank Vogel's future as coach and Roy Hibbert's future as starting center among other things.