Danny Granger had some choice words for Joakim Noah after the Pacers were eliminated in Game 5, per ESPN.

“He pulled a cowardly move,” Granger said. “He cheap-shotted a couple of my teammates, and one gets thrown out …

“The refs never catch what he did … it’s cowardly. And I’m going to say something about it. I wanted to say something about it all the way to the game was over. I just don’t think the game should be played that way. You can play hard and fight and battle, but when you start cheap-shotting people it gets out of hand.”

For his part, Noah didn’t escalate the situation any further:

“I played dirty? OK. I’m just trying to win basketball games, man,” Noah said. “It’s the name of the game.

“I’m just out there trying to do what I gotta do. Like I said, I give a lot of credit to their team. They play hard as hell. They were competitive. I don’t have anything bad to say about them. Everybody saw what happened out there. Now you want to call me a dirty player? I don’t think I’ve ever been a dirty player. It is what it is. It’s OK.”

Josh McRoberts didn’t seem to take issue with Noah’s play.

“I’m not mad about it,” McRoberts said. “He got a good hit on me. They caught me trying to hit him back.

“It’s part of the game. I’m not going to say it’s dirty. That’s Game 5 of a playoff series. You can’t say it’s dirty, it’s part of basketball.”

Here’s the play in question. You’ll see at the 0:25 mark that Noah was standing still underneath the basket with his elbow raised and McRoberts initiated the contact. Noah does nothing wrong.

Noah is not a popular player outside of Chicago, but I like his game. He plays with great energy and has a terrific feel for the game, especially for a big man. He is the heart and soul of this Bulls team.

I don’t know if this says more about the Pacers’ ability to shoot the ball or the Nuggets’ inability to defend, probably a combination of the two. Indiana started the third quarter with a 10-point lead. Watch how the lead grows as the Pacers get hot from the field.

Indiana scored 54 points in the third quarter and won the game 144-113. If you’re wondering, the Pacers had just one turnover in the period (a bad pass by Darren Collison) and Josh McRoberts missed the final shot of the quarter (a 26-foot 3PT attempt).

The Pacers are better than I thought they’d be. They have an up-and-coming point guard (Collison) and big man (Roy Hibbert) to go along with their All-Star wing (Danny Granger). And if Mike Dunleavy is going to shoot the ball like this, Indiana will be tough to beat.

As we all wait for LeBron’s decision, let’s watch Daniel Orton and Josh McRoberts push and shove in a summer league game. Orton got tossed from his first NBA game.

Here’s what he had to say on Twitter:

Still can’t believe I got ejected for fighting ha but it wasn’t a good day at all for me..

Yeah…no, it wasn’t a good day.