Officials in Saturday night’s Houston Rockets and Atlanta Hawks game had to remove a game ball due to a sticky substance that Rockets’ Dwight Howard applied to it.
While waiting to reenter the game late in the first quarter, Howard apparently applied a Stickum spray to his hands. Howard then checked back in and grabbed the ball from the official. When Hawks Paul Millsap got the ball back to complete his second free throw he immediately questioned what was on it.
“I’ve never felt the ball like that, ever. It was sticky. It was like super glue or something was on there. I couldn’t get it off my hands. It was the weirdest thing,” said Millsap according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Official Monty McCutchen investigated the situation and went to each bench and issued a warning. He told each team: “Stickum is illegal in the NBA.”
“I don’t know why people are making a big deal out of it,” Howard said, according to the Houston Chronicle. “I do it every game. It’s not a big deal. I ain’t tripping.”
The league says that they will be reviewing the incident.
Source: ESPN