Say What?!? Dwight Howard Suspended 1st Game Of 2015-16 Season

The Houston Rockets were dealt some interesting news after their Game 5 Western Conference Finals bow-out against the Golden State Warriors this past Wednesday.

Dwight Howard, who has had his fair share of flagrant foul calls as of late, has another one added to his resume.

The NBA has decided that Howard will have his common foul upgraded to a Flagrant Level 1 foul to which he’ll be penalized by being suspended for the first game of the 2015-16 season.

The NBA reports:

The call stems from a play late in 4th quarter of WCF Game 5 where Howard was setting a pick up top on Andre Iguodala while the Rockets had possession of the ball.

As Howard was setting the pick, his left forearm went way too high causing him create hard contact with Iguodala’s left shoulder causing him tumble to floor grimacing in pain.

The initial call was for an offensive foul but after further review to see if it warranted a flagrant, the referee crew decided to leave the call as it stood which caused much dismay amongst the Warriors fans at Oracle Arena.

What do you think?  Watch the clip and you be the judge:

To be quite honest, that particular play was quite edgy for today’s NBA but if this were the 1980s/1990s this wouldn’t be an issue as the game was more physical back then.

That’s why that call sucked!

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If the Rockets had won Game 5, there’s no doubt in my mind that his call would’ve not been upgraded and he would’ve been active for Game 6.

This decision was made just to ensure that the NBA is doling out some type of punishment to make it look like that they’re doing their job.

I guess they proved their point because we won’t have our biggest gun in the paint for the first game of the season.

But we’ve been through this before, having D12 out for a game is not going to be catastrophic for the Rockets. They battled adversity then and they’ll continue to battle it now.

And who knows what this roster will look like with D12 complementing it next season? You know Daryl Morey is a magician at making deals so I roll my eyes at this late decision in terms of impact!

In other news, Howard will have the technical he received earlier in Game 5 in the 2nd quarter rescinded:

This was a double-technical that was doled out with 3:19 left in the 2nd quarter as Howard and Andrew Bogut continued to have an unpleasant exchange of words going back to the previous possession where Howard felt that there was contact when he had the ball.

Once Bogut shoved Howard away, the whistles blew.

Here’s the clip of the exchange:

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This is good news for Howard, considering his wallet is no longer $2,000 lighter.

But he has be cognizant at the rate he’s getting these technical fouls because the Rockets don’t want to be situation where it will hurt them in the future because of alarming rate of recklessness.

Go Rockets.

Next: Was The Houston Rockets Season A Fluke?