The NBA is too soft. That’s what some critics of the league have been saying for the better part of the last two decades, which have coincided with a more polished player in the era of LeBron James. Ever since the league made a conscious effort to “clean” its image following the Malice at the Palace, and players took more interest in their personal brands in the age of social media, tough guys were essentially legislated out of the game.
It didn’t hurt that overall skill levels were improving too. There simply wasn’t room for enforcer types anymore. As players opted to avoid fines and suspensions, what used to be full-on brawls turned into small dust-ups. A league once criticized for having a “thug” image (read: too Black) got labeled as soft almost overnight.
Enter Isaiah Stewart. We have enough data points to conclude he wants all the smoke.
Funny enough, the latest incident to suggest Stewart is with the sh… well, you know – didn’t start with Stewart at all. It was Donte DiVincenzo, who roughed up Pistons rookie Ron Holland to spark a brawl between Detroit and the Minnesota Timberwolves. But if it’s a scrap involving the Pistons, Stewart is never too far. Of course, he was one of the seven people ultimately ejected from the game.
A fight breaks out between the Pistons and Timberwolves
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) March 31, 2025
Donte DiVincenzo, Naz Reid, Ron Holland, Isaiah Stewart, Marcus Sasser, Pistons HC J. B. Bickerstaff and Wolves assistant coach Pablo Prigioni were all ejected pic.twitter.com/TJA3OczOxB
It’s too fitting that our first real introduction to Stewart’s temper came in his rage-filled attempt to get after the poster boy for the NBA’s polished image, LeBron James himself. It was a little over three years ago when a bloodied Stewart tried to fight through an entire army of people to do god-knows-what to the chosen one and undo 20 years of good PR in one fell swoop. By the time he was arrested for assault for punching Drew Eubanks last February, Stewart's reputation as a certified hot-head was well established.
Even after all that, I’m not sure we realized just how unhinged Stewart truly is until earlier this year when he started jawing at the NBA’s resident black-belt James Johnson – ...
