Boston Celtic Kevin Garnett said that he expected to receive the one-game suspension today (Monday, Apr. 19) for the elbow he landed to the face of Quentin Richardson during a fourth-quarter brawl with the Miami Heat in Saturday’s Game 1. And, as he did before he learned his fate Sunday, tried to defuse the situation.
“No, I wasn’t surprised at all, to be honest,” said Garnett. “I told my man, [Celtics vice president of media relations] Jeff Twiss, when we were talking that I just want my message to be done, and all of this to be over with. My message here is: Whoever it is, my teammates, [Celtics coach] Doc Rivers, or anyone in the organization, I want them to know I got their back.
“The elbow wasn’t deliberate. The league does what it has to do to set the tone. I respect that. It’s time to move on and get back to a wonderful series.”
Garnett did grit his teeth when asked about whether the instigator in the situation — Richardson — should have gotten more than a $25,000 fine.
“You know how it goes,” said Garnett. “The person that usually instigates something is not the one that usually gets the penalty. But it’s over. It’s what it is. We’ve both been dealt with.”
Rivers, who stressed Sunday before finding out about the punishment that the whole situation might have been avoided had Richardson not instigated the incident by standing near an injured Paul Pierce and suggested he was exaggerating his maladies, again campaigned for the league to be harsher with instigators.
“My only statement on the whole thing, I accept Kevin being suspended, if you go by the letter of the law, you kinda knew it was going to go that way,” said Rivers. “But if your really want to stop the fights, you gotta suspend the agitator, too. I think right now, the agitator gets fined, the retaliator gets suspend in all these things. Until they stop the agitator, and fine them, and suspend them both, then you’ll have these things.
Garnett practiced with the second team Monday, joking he hadn’t done that since his rookie season in Minnesota.
Information from Espn.com contributed to this report.