Walton calls out Bucks staffer after skirmish: 'Don't touch my damn players'

The Friday night melee that saw two of his players ejected against the Milwaukee Bucks was frustrating enough to watch for Luke Walton, but the Los Angeles Lakers coach found another reason to be outraged by the skirmish upon review.

"Watching the tape, one of their employees is on the floor, and he grabs Brandon (Ingram) by the jersey and shoves him," Walton said postgame, as reported by ESPN's Baxter Holmes and Jovan Buha.

"He works for them. He can touch their players all he wants. Don't touch my damn players, because if that's OK, I'm sure we can find a couple people here in L.A. that want that job working for the Lakers, too. That's not right."

Officials needed to break up a third-quarter skirmish after a hard foul by Bucks rookie Malcolm Brogdon on Lakers swingman Nick Young led to some pushing between Young, Brogdon, Ingram, Bucks big man Greg Monroe, and then other players from both teams.

When the dust settled, Young, Monroe, and Lakers guard D'Angelo Russell were ejected.

"I'm going to need an explanation on it because it made no sense to me," Walton steamed after the 107-103 loss. "They told me that D'Angelo got kicked out for escalating the situation. But D'Angelo only responded after Monroe had grabbed Nick by the neck and thrown him. If D'Angelo didn't push him, I would've been pissed off at D'Angelo. He did the right thing.

"So for the NBA to say that the two of them did the same thing and just canceled each other out is absolute crap to me. I don't know if (Monroe) was mad that (Ivica) Zubac was kicking his butt all night long out there. But you grab someone by the neck? That's not right. And then Monroe went and slapped Brandon in the face. So he did all that and he got the same penalty as when D'Angelo just did it for shoving someone in the back that was a teammate. So that's crap to me."