Dwight Howard, Troy Murphy Get Into It After Hard Foul

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During the third quarter of Monday night’s game, Pacers Forward Troy Murphy grabbed Howard around the neck. Howard looked like he was going to retaliate, but he did not make contact with Murphy. The Pacers argued that it was a punch and that Howard should have been tossed from the game while Howard and the Magic argued the opposite.

Pacers Head Coach Jim O’Brien was very angry in his post game press conference.

“I thought he threw a punch. They have to just review it. They’ve got to call it. It certainly should have been a technical foul.”

Magic Head Coach Stan Van Gundy saw the other side of the situation.

“It’s out of hand what they’re letting people do to Dwight. And if you’re going to let people continue to hit him around the head and grab him around the neck, look, I don’t care, those are flagrant fouls, they need to be called. I don’t care who you are, you’re only going to take that for so long. It’s absurd what’s going on.”

Troy Murphy finished the game with 14 points and 6 rebounds. Dwight Howard had 21 points and 23 rebounds.

(Andrew Melnick is Howard the Dunk’s lead blogger and a contributor at NFL Mocks Subscribe to his RSS feed and add him on Twitter to follow him daily.)