An MVP Shoves. An NBA Team Owner Falls. The Basketball World Decides

That question came up almost halfway through Sunday night’s game between the Denver Nuggets and Phoenix Suns. After Phoenix’s Josh Okogie sailed into the courtside seating to chase a loose ball, Denver star Nikola Jokic rushed to collect it, hoping to inbound the ball before Okogie had recovered. When Jokic tried to pry it from a spectator’s hands in Phoenix’s Footprint Center, a comedy of retaliatory gamesmanship ensued.

The fan gripped the ball tight; Jokic wrenched harder and popped it airborne; the fan leaned into Jokic; Jokic’s forearm extended; the fan flailed and fell backward. The punchline: That courtside attendee was Mat Ishbia, the newly installed owner of the Suns.

Was it a flop, an exaggeration to draw a penalty on Jokic? If so, it was possibly the first, likely the most useful and certainly the most memorable owner flop in NBA history. Jokic was whistled for a technical foul, and Kevin Durant made the ensuing free throw.

“He got us a point,” Phoenix guard Devin Booker said with a laugh after the Suns’ 129-124 win. “He did his job.”

At halftime of Sunday’s game, Ishbia told the Associated Press he was “fine.” On Monday, Ishbia tweeted, “Suspending or fining anyone over last nights incident would not be right. I have alot of respect for Jokic and don’t want to see anything like that.”

As NBA Twitter pored over the replay of TNT’s broadcast, consensus seemed to be that Ishbia had, in on-court parlance, embellished the contact. His lolling head and flung-out arms brought to mind basketball’s best slapstick artists, such as Vlade Divac defending Shaquille O’Neal in the 2000s.

There was, however, an undeniable physical discrepancy. Jokic, per the Nuggets’ team website, stands 6-feet-11 and weighs 284 pounds. Ishbia, a mortgage magnate who walked onto Michigan State’s basketball team in the late 1990s and 2000s, was 5-feet-10 and weighed 175 pounds in his playing days, according to Sports-Reference.

Tony Brothers, the crew chief who adjudicated the technical, said that Jokic “deliberately gave him a shove and pushed him down, so he was issued an unsportsmanlike technical foul.”

Still, Brothers said, the action wasn’t entirely unprovoked—thus the lack of ejection. “He didn’t just run over and hit a fan,” Brothers said. “There was some engagement.”

The incident marks the latest chapter in an eventful ownership tenure for Ishbia, who agreed to buy the Suns in December. Ishbia entered the league with a reputation for a different sort of confrontation, having already established a rivalry with Dan Gilbert, another mortgage-company owner and governor of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Ishbia and Gilbert, a fellow Michigan State alum, had turned donations to the Spartans into a currency of one-upmanship. The basketball team was eventually labeled “MSU Spartans Presented by Rocket Mortgage”—Gilbert’s company.

Less than two months after buying the Suns, Ishbia was swinging a season-shaking deal for Durant, who pushed Phoenix—now tied with Denver at two games apiece in their conference semifinal series—to the front of the championship conversation.

The NBA announced Monday that it fined Jokic $25,000 but he wouldn’t be suspended for the incident. The sequence had a substantial influence on the outcome, representing one Phoenix point in what would end up a five-point margin.

For all its goofiness, it also ignited conversation about the standards of behavior between team owners and athletes. In the 2019 Finals, Toronto guard Kyle Lowry fell into the courtside seats at the Warriors’ home floor and Mark Stevens, a Golden State minority owner, shoved him. Stevens was banned from league activities for a year.

“The fan put a hand on me first,” Jokic said postgame, explaining his side of the story. “So I thought the league’s supposed to protect us or whatever, but maybe I’m wrong.”

“Sitting on the court, he’s a fan, isn’t he?” Jokic added. “Whoever it is, he’s a fan, so he cannot influence the game by holding the ball.”

Nuggets coach Mike Malone had the same outlook, referring to Ishbia as “some fan is holding on to the ball like he wants to be a part of the game.” As for whether that fan’s status as the majority owner of the opposing team should factor into the equation, Malone said, “I don’t give a s—.”

Jokic scored 53 points and passed out 11 assists Sunday night, a performance that seemed somehow reduced to a footnote. The chatter of the NBA world, after the game, was flops and fans’ status. Ernie Johnson, hosting TNT’s studio show, took the posture of a scolding parent.

“Don’t either of you guys do it again,” Johnson said. “Mat Ishbia, don’t hold [on to] the ball. Joker, don’t make him flop.”