Los Angeles Lakers center Dwight Howard was fined $35,000 by the NBA on Thursday for his Flagrant-2 foul on Denver’s Kenneth Faried on Wednesday night.
Howard shoved Faried in the face as the Nuggets forward was driving to the basket with 5:02 left in the third quarter. Howard was ejected after the play.
The NBA said it fined Howard because he made “excessive contact with Faried above the shoulders,” according to a league statement.
“I was going for the ball and he kept going up, so obviously when you miss the ball and you hit a part of somebody else’s body … it’s going to look extremely bad,” Howard said after the game. “I was surprised it was a Flagrant 2. I could see it being a flagrant foul because it was a pretty hard foul, but for me to get ejected from the game, I don’t think it was called for.”
Added Faried: “He saw my eyes. I wasn’t going to back down, I wasn’t going to try to float it. I was going to try to dunk on him. He saw it, that’s why he put his hand directly in my face. That’s when I say, ‘Dang, I wish I would have jumped higher.’”