The right answer is both, it was a misunderstanding because john thought that Paul was being greedy in keeping the paddle longer than fifteen minutes. Paul didn’t know about the time limit and thought that John Quinn was picking on him.
Paul is nervous and does not realize what he is doing.
John feels he has to fight or he will look bad in front of the other kids.
Because Paul did not know the rules about the use of paddles, he kept one past the time limit