The home debut of LeBron James brought Showtime to the Staples Center, with a glittering array of onlookers that included Jack Nicholson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Floyd Mayweather. But what it brought instead was go time, as a brawl erupted with Chris Paul and Rajon Rondo at its epicenter.
The two have a fair amount of ugly history between them and that was apparent late in the fourth quarter. The Houston Rockets were up by a point on the Los Angeles Lakers when Brandon Ingram pushed James Harden in the back. Ingram was called for a technical by referee Jason Phillips after Ingram yelled at the ref and Lance Stephenson pulled him away.