Former Cavaliers coach shockingly ejected in massive brawl

What does it mean to stand up for your team?

Former Cleveland Cavaliers head coach J.B. Bickerstaff has done a phenomenal job of turning around the moribund Detroit Pistons and transforming a last-place team into a surefire playoff outifit. This past week the Pistons became the first team in NBA history to triple its win total from one season to the next.

One key way he has done that is by reshaping the culture. For all that former Pistons coach Monty Williams seems like an excellent human being, he was unable to instill a winning culture in Detroit, just as he was unable to maintain one in Phoenix before his previous firing.

Bickerstaff, on the other hand, formed that culture in Cleveland and instilled not only a defensive identity but a sense of brotherhood. Players go out on the court and compete for one another; they win together, they lose together. He has brought that to Detroit, and the results have been phenomenal. If Cavaliers head coach Kenny Atkinson doesn't win Coach of the Year it's because Bickerstaff came out of nowhere and stole it.

Bickerstaff joined in on an all-out brawl

On Sunday night, however, the downstream implications of such a "fight for your brothers" mentality is that, when push comes to shove, you may literally start to fight for your brothers. Playing the usually-testy Minnesota Timberwolves, a physical game slowly built in intensity until it spilled over. Timberwolves center took exception to a foul by Ron Holland and started wagging his finger. Holland snapped back, and suddenly players were pouring into an all-out brawl that spilled across the baseline into the photographers and courtside fans.

In a flash Bickerstaff and his coaching staff poured into the melee, at first trying to hold back the Pistons players from getting further involved. At one point Bickerstaff was physically holding back one of his players. Yet something was a bit different about his posture. Often coaches try to be agents of calm, and occasionally they ream out their own players for not staying disciplined.

Not so J.B. Bickerstaff. He was locked onto the Minnesota players and appeared to be barking alongside his players. Then, as the knot of people finally started to break up, he started going at Pablo Prigioni - one of the Timberwolves coaches. He was pointing and jawing, Prigioni had to be held back, and they very nearly started another wave of the brawl.

Bickerstaff never came to blows with any Minnesota player or coach and appeared to only contact Pistons players, but when the referees sorted through the tape and announced their ejections, Bickerstaff was among them. It is not very often that an NBA head coach gets ejected as a part of a brawl.

After the game, Bickerstaff defended his involvement, stating that "There were things said by their assistant coach. I’m not going to let people say belligerent things about my guys and it’s that simple."

While NBA brawls are nowhere near as common as they were 20 years ago, they do happen. Players are amped up and already jawing with one another, and things happen to push them over the edge.

Yet that almost always means players are getting ejected, not head coaches. If a coach gets ejected it's for detonating on a referee for a bad call, not because they are pointing fingers and snapping back at opposing coaches.

Bickerstaff is all-in on defending his team. He wants to establish a culture of having his players' backs. The question is whether this moment further galvanizes the team behind him and behind one another, to great effect -- or whether it's opening the door to further undisciplined behavior, and the team loses hold of the hope and is punked in the playoffs.

That's yet to be seen, but it's hard to blame Bickerstaff for trying to stand up for his players. In the end, he is trying to instill a new culture in a place of losing. Can he do so without sending Detroit back to the worst parts of its history in the process?

If he can, then the Cavaliers might just be facing their old head coach in the second round of the NBA Playoffs. But only if he isn't suspended first.