For better or worse, Matthew Dellavedova has made a name for himself in the 2015 NBA playoffs.
The Cavaliers' undrafted second-year guard put people on notice when he dropped a career- and team-high 19 points in Cleveland's series-clinching Game 6 win over the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference semis.
He also drew a good deal of attention for a questionable play in that series in which he appeared to leg-lock Bulls forward Taj Gibson during a scuffle under the basket, provoking a retaliatory kick that got Gibson ejected.
Dellavedova's infamy only grew in Game 2 of the Conference Finals against the Atlanta Hawks, when he landed on Kyle Korver's leg while diving for a loose ball and knocked him out of the playoffs. A game later, he got tangled up with Hawks center Al Horford and took an elbow to the head that earned Horford an ejection of his own.
Afterward, Horford pointed out that a pattern was emerging.
"Maybe it wasn’t on purpose," he said of Dellavedova's role in the dust-up. "But, you know, with just his track record, I just felt like it was."
Dellavedova, understandably, chafed at that accusation, which many observers latched onto in the aftermath of the Horford incident.
"When (the Horford incident) first happened, I was pretty annoyed by people calling me dirty because I think it's a pretty serious thing to say that about somebody in the sporting world," he told Bleacher Report's Jared Zwerling on Sunday. "Because no one was talking about the Korver loose ball until the Horford thing happened. That's why I was kind of a bit perplexed by that, and then I just pretty much turned off my phone and didn't really watch TV."
Dellavedova is notoriously feisty, physical, and competitive - teammate Tristan Thompson recently recalled the way he and Kyrie Irving used to "fuck each other up" in practice - but he sees a big difference between playing a gritty brand of basketball and reckless endangerment.
As for the Korver incident, the Maryborough, Australia native explained that his natural instincts kicked in when he saw the loose ball.
"In Australian football, there's a way you dive on a ball so you can get it to your teammate as quick as possible," he said. "We'll use the Korver example. I dove on the ball, and I quickly tried to grab the ball and then quickly sit up and try to find a teammate. If you just dive straight for the ball, what are you going to do on your belly with the ball? It's going to end up either a jump ball, or you burn a timeout."
Asked whether things have changed for him at all, now that he's far more ensconced in the limelight than he's ever been, Dellavedova claimed it's been business as usual.
"My life is just the same," he said. "I still do the same things. I spend a lot of time at Chipotle."
