{"id":400102,"date":"2026-11-13T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T08:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/?p=400102"},"modified":"2026-11-15T16:27:25","modified_gmt":"2026-11-15T16:27:25","slug":"marcus-smart-suspended-three-games-bassey-punch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/marcus-smart-suspended-three-games-bassey-punch\/","title":{"rendered":"Marcus Smart&#8217;s meltdown has been punished"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was obvious Marcus Smart would be sanctioned. During the last game between the Rockets and Warriors, the guard lost his head and tried to throw a punch at Charles Bassey. He didn&#8217;t connect properly, but the NBA took note and has now announced that he is suspended for the next three games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The incident happened at the end of the third quarter. After a drive from Amen Thompson, Smart and Bassey ended up face to face exchanging words while Yaxel Lendeborg tried to separate them. It did little good, as Smart swung a right hand that grazed Bassey&#8217;s nose, with Bassey managing to avoid the blow by pulling back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After reviewing the action, the referees gave Smart a flagrant foul 2 and he was ejected from the game. Now, with the three-game ban imposed by the NBA, the <em>guard<\/em> will miss Friday&#8217;s home game against the Utah Jazz, Sunday&#8217;s against the Washington Wizards and Monday&#8217;s against the Miami Heat. Here is the play in question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"es\" dir=\"ltr\">Sorprende que Marcus Smart pierda as\u00ed la cabeza lanzando un pu\u00f1etazo a Bassey<br><br>Sorprende a\u00fan m\u00e1s que haya gresca en un partido de los Warriors y no est\u00e9 Draymond Green implicado <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/c6VIbhEHUB\">pic.twitter.com\/c6VIbhEHUB<\/a><\/p>&mdash; nbamaniacs (@nbamaniacs) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/nbamaniacs\/status\/2120803555133243771?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 12, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Smart, with 12 years of experience in the American league, joined the Texas franchise as a free agent over the summer. In the nine games he has played so far, he is averaging 8.6 points, 2.6 rebounds and 1.1 steals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Bassey on Marcus Smart: &#8220;He was playing dirty&#8221;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Far from playing down the matter, the San Francisco team&#8217;s big man stresses that, given Smart&#8217;s behaviour during the game, he already expected him to do something like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;He was playing dirty throughout the whole game. I remember that in the first half, I tried to set a screen and he grabbed my knee. He was playing dirty. I think he was trying to get a rebound. He was grabbing my hand and I was trying to get back to defend. Then he came up to me and just threw a punch. Obviously, it was a regrettable action. Honestly, I think it was a show of fake toughness. It didn&#8217;t surprise me. I knew he was going to do something. He had no intention of playing basketball. It was pure fake toughness,&#8221; he concludes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>(Photograph by IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Houston Rockets player tried to attack Bassey in the last game against the Warriors, throwing a punch that did not land cleanly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":400103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,34,162],"class_list":["post-400102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-houston-rockets","tag-marcus-smart","no-featured-image-padding","resize-featured-image"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/vie13-marcus-smart.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Kiera Gardner","author_link":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/author\/kiera\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400190,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400102\/revisions\/400190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nbamaniacs.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}