Isaiah Thomas called out DeMarre Carroll by calling him a nonfactor Friday night in the wake of Carroll's hard push to the back on a fast break that sent the Boston Celtics guard sprawling to the floor.
Thomas immediately ran at Carroll to confront him after the second-quarter play. The ensuing fracas resulted in technical fouls for both players and for the Celtics' Jae Crowder, and Carroll ultimately earned a flagrant foul 1 for the initial shove.
"It was intentional. Did you see it?" Thomas said after scoring 20 points in the Celtics' 107-97 loss to the Toronto Raptors. "Yeah, that's not a basketball play by any means. Guys who aren't factors in games do that. It is what it is."
Thomas said the nature of Carroll's move didn't have a place in today's game.
"It's not like back in the day where you can put your hands up and fight a guy," Thomas said. "You can't do that. But that was not a basketball play whatsoever, and that's not cool that he did that."
The Celtics held an 11-point lead with 2:23 left in the first half at the time of the play. Toronto responded to the brief dust-up by scoring the final seven points of the first half -- aided when Thomas was tagged for a flagrant 1 soon after for a foul on DeMar DeRozan -- to trim an earlier 17-point deficit to 10. By midway through the third quarter, the Raptors had surged ahead.
Thomas had just four points in the fourth quarter and said the Raptors simply wanted the win more.
"We played harder in the first half and they played harder in the second," Thomas said. "They got to loose balls, 50-50 balls were theirs. They pushed us out offensively and we were catching balls beyond the 3-point line, denying us. They played better than us tonight."
Information from ESPN's Chris Forsberg and The Associated Press was used in this report.
