NBA Playoffs 2015: Hawks Al Horford Believes Matthew Dellavedova Went for his Legs

A controversial call in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Atlanta Hawks might have just ended the Hawks' season.

At the end of the second quarter, Cavaliers point guard Matthew Dellavedova almost fell on top Horford's legs, leading the All-Star to retaliate by intentionally coming down on top of him.

"I did think he went at me," Horford, who was ejected, said. "But I should've handled it better, shouldn't have got caught up in that. It's something that I'll definitely learn from."

Dellavedova, who received a technical, fell in a similar way during Game 2 while chasing a loose ball. In that instance, however, Dellavedova ended up injuring Kyle Korver, who is out for the rest of the season. Dellavedova was involved in a similar incident during the Cavs - Chicago Bulls series against Taj Gibson.

"We're out there competing," Horford said. "But he's gotta learn, I mean he's only been in this league for a couple of years or whatever, but he's gotta learn that at the end of the day it's a big brotherhood here. Guys look out for each other and, I don't think that it was malicious, but he's gotta learn,

Horford added, after acknowledging the fact that his decision to retaliate was poor, "If it was on purpose or not, we don't know. Maybe it wasn't on purpose. But, you know, with just his track record, I just felt like it was."

Hawks DeMarre Carroll stated that even if Dellavedova did not intentionally try to hurt his teammates, "when you dive at people's feet, nothing but bad things are going to happen."

Carroll also said, "You know, he did it to Kyle. He's one of our starters and he gotta have surgery, he's out 4-6 months. And he did it to Al. I think Al said, 'Enough of this.' And he did what he did. I think [Dellavedova] is just competitive, man. Sometimes when you compete so hard, you can take it overboard. So there's gotta be a fine line between competing and being crazy. You know, Al just did what he thought was necessary to protect our team and make a stand. And he got threw out."

Watch the incident here:

Dellavedova and his teammates defended the play, stating that they were being aggressive and not malicious.

"I would obviously disagree with that, I was boxing him out. You can see from the baseline view that he's pulling my arm," Dellavedova said.

LeBron James added, "We're not trying to get people hurt. But you play to win the game and you play aggressively. This guy, he works his tails off every single day. He beats the odds and he comes to play as hard as he can every single night. If they're focusing on Delly, they're focusing on the wrong thing."

Game 4 of the series will be on Tuesday, May 26 at 8:30 p.m. ET on TNT. The Cavaliers are leading the series 3-0.