Indiana Pacers teammates Lance Stephenson (right in photo) and Evan Turner got into a fistfight the day before their first-round Eastern Conference playoff series with Atlanta Hawks began.

According to Yahoo Sports, Luis Scola and David West had to drag a cursing and cut Turner out of the Bankers Life Fieldhouse practice court after untangling him from a fight with Stephenson on the hardwood floor Friday. Reportedly, the teammates had been clashing due to their respective on-court games. The day after the scrap, the Pacers embarrassingly dropped Game 1 to the Hawks 101-93.

"This stuff happens, but the timing wasn’t ideal," one witness told Yahoo Sports, which adds that Turner wasn’t the first Pacer to lose his temper with Stephenson over the last few weeks.

Perhaps Stephenson was one of the players that Pacers center Roy Hibbert was referring to when he said the team has “selfish dudes” a few weeks back.

Despite the in-house friction, the Eastern Conference’s top-seeded Pacers were able to bounce back in Game 2 with a 101-85 victory over Atlanta on Tuesday night.

"We've been on the ropes a little bit," West told Yahoo Sports after the game. "Every team goes through that. But I thought we did a great job of dealing with whatever issues we had. The great thing about this group has always been that we're very open with one another, always been able to get through the ups and downs of a long NBA season."

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(Photos from Left: Andy Lyons/Getty Images, Christian Petersen/Getty Images)