Shannon Sharpe says Memphis Grizzlies player "didn't want this smoke" after his fight erupts during LA Lakers game

An altercation between NFL Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe and Memphis Grizzlies players occurred at halftime of Friday night's game between the LA Lakers and Memphis Grizzlies.

Shannon Sharpe granted an interview to ESPN during which he seemed to claim that he had every intention of fighting the Memphis Grizzlies players:

“They didn’t want this smoke, Dave. They do all this talking and jockeying and I ain’t about that jockeying. It started with Dillon Brooks. I said that he is too small to guard LeBron. He said, ‘F**k me’, I said ‘F**k’ you back. He started to come at me and I said, ‘You don’t want these problems.’”

He added:

“And then Ja came out of nowhere talking. He definitely didn’t want any problems. Then the dad came and he obviously didn’t want no problems. But I wanted anything they had. Don’t let these fools fool you now.”

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Shannon Sharpe involved in an extraordinary fight with Memphis Grizzlies players

The incident began when Shannon Sharpe, a passionate LA Lakers supporter, yelled at Grizzlies player Ja Morant as he walked off the court toward the locker room. Morant's teammate Steven Adams stepped in front of him and approached Sharpe, leading to an exchange of words between Sharpe and several Grizzlies players.

As the confrontation continued, Ja Morant's father, Tee Morant, also got involved and had to be separated from Sharpe by arena security. The altercation caused a commotion in the crowd but ultimately did not escalate to anything more than verbal exchanges.

After the incident, Shannon Sharpe and Tee Morant returned to their seats for the second half of the game. Fans will be happy that the altercation was resolved without any physical altercation and the game continued without any further incident.

The LA Lakers were losing against the Memphis Grizzlies 88-75 at the time of writing this article. The Lakers had a 3-point lead at the end of the first quarter, but the Grizzlies have since hit back and have Ja Morant leading the scoring with 20 points and 7 assists.

The LA Lakers will be hoping LeBron James can pull off a comeback, although it is Russell Westbrook off the bench who has been the top scorer for the Lakers thus far.

He had 16 points and 4 assists at the time of writing, while LeBron was at 13 points and 5 rebounds. The LA Lakers need to churn out victories to have hope of playoff contention.