Hilton Armstrong got to watch two awful things on television during his one-game suspension for the midair shove of Miami center Joel Anthony on Monday.
First, Armstrong couldn’t help but see the video of the play itself, which earned a flagrant foul, penalty two and immediate ejection at the end of the third quarter of Monday’s loss to Heat.
“I just kept watching the way Joel Anthony fell,” said Armstrong. “I was watching on tape. It was real scary. It felt, it just put chills in me because I’m just watching. I didn’t mean for that to happen at all, and when [Juwan] Howard pushed me, I was just – I didn’t even care at all. You can see by the way I reacted. I just slid, I got up. I could care less. I’m not worried about him at all. I promise.”
Armstrong also knew as soon as he was ejected that he was likely to miss the next game, too.
“After it happened and they called a flagrant two, I knew I was going to be suspended,” he said. “It kind of shocked me because I never thought, me out of all people, would have to go through something like that. I know I’m not that type of guy or anything. But it just caught me off guard. There’s nothing you can do about it at that point.”
It also meant that he would be forced to suffer through Washington’s embarrassing 127-108 loss at Toronto on Wednesday in the same manner as most Wizards fans back in Washington.
“It hurts because I know we can play a lot better than that, and it’s like that a lot,” said Armstrong. “When we have bad games, it just hurts that much more because I know we are a lot better than that.”
Armstrong will make his return tonight against Portland, which has actually lost more games in a row (five) than Washington (four). Wizards head coach Flip Saunders said he was optimistic prior to shoot-around this morning that Yi Jianlian will also be available after missing the last nine games with a hyperextended knee.
