Malone downplays Nuggets-Blazers scuffle: 'It's playoff basketball'

Denver Nuggets head coach Mike Malone has seen his share of NBA postseason bedlam, but he feels Thursday's fourth-quarter altercation between his team and the Portland Trail Blazers was far from anything of the sort.

With both teams preparing for Sunday's do-or-die decider, Malone doesn't anticipate the incident directly instigating any further heated altercations in Game 7.

"It's Will Barton protecting himself from a guy falling into his knees," Malone told reporters Saturday, including ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk. "It's Seth Curry taking offense to it. They get into a little minor skirmish - move on.

"Game 7 will be hard-fought. It will be emotional because of what's at stake. I don't think it's going to be a carry-over from what happened in last game. It's playoff basketball. It should be a hard-fought game. It should be physical. It should be teams protecting each other."

The Trail Blazers were up 14 midway through the final frame when Curry went to check on floored teammate Zach Collins and nudged the nearby Barton in the process. Barton shoved Curry in response and then appeared to poke him in the eye, prompting teammates to separate the two.

Curry blamed Barton for escalating the incident and called him and others on Denver's squad "sassy," but Malone, who reminded reporters his father Brendan was an assistant coach with the Detroit Pistons during the infamous "Bad Boys" era, doesn't consider the encounter anything worth reading into.

"To me, that's weak," Malone said. "If that's chippiness, I mean ... I grew up in a much different time in the NBA. If that's chippiness and you want to call it 'sassy,' go ahead. But to me, it's a joke."