Trevor Ariza and Austin Rivers have buried the hatchet.
MORE: Jazz Exum cleared for non-contact practice drills
Rivers said Ariza reached out to him this week after Ariza led three Rockets players to the Clippers locker room after Tuesday's (AEDT) game to clear the air about what went down.
"First and foremost, me and Trevor have no problems," Rivers told ESPN Thursday (AEDT) . "He called me. He reached out to me. Trevor and I talked and hashed everything out. He was really cool about being the bigger guy and calling me."
Ariza and Rockets teammates Gerald Green were each suspended two games for trying to bust into the Clippers locker room after things got chippy on the court. Chris Paul and James Harden, who were with Ariza and Green, were not punished. Neither were any of the Clippers players.
Rivers was sidelined for the game but riled up Ariza for getting mouthy on the bench.
"The whole game was filled with cheap shots. So I'm not calling anyone out. But (Ariza) had given Blake (Griffin) a little something, and he walked towards our bench. So what do you expect is going to happen? I started talking to him," Rivers said. "If I cheap-shotted James Harden, their best player, and I walked down by the Houston bench, you don't think anybody on their bench would've started talking to me? OK then."
Rivers said he began yelling "Do it!" to Ariza from the sideline, but Ariza didn't hear exactly what he said, which escalated the matter.
"He turned around and said, 'What the f— did you just say to me?' Then he called me some stuff. And I'm a grown man. I'm not going to take nothing from nobody, just like he wouldn't," Rivers explained.
"So I took offense to it. And he didn't know what I said. So after the game he came in the locker room and his whole thing was, 'What'd he say? What'd he say?'"
However, once the situation died down, Rivers said Montrezl Harrell set up the phone call between the two and Ariza apologized for overreacting.