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Glen “Big-Baby” Davis lives up to his nickname; and Kevin Garnett, I expected better from you
I try to stay out of the drama in the NBA. Kwame Brown wants to fight Matt Barnes… not that interested. KAT and Embiid have beef… don’t really care. *Insert player name X* and *Insert player name Y* both dated a Kardashian… would be tough for me to give less of a shit. But, the fan who threw the water bottle at Kyrie, and the subsequent backlash that Kyrie has received after a video surfaced of him rubbing his foot on the Celtics logo… this has really struck a nerve with me.
Some Background
Note: I am a die-hard Celtics fan who has watched every single minute of every single game for the past 10 years, so I come at this from that perspective.
You can find all the details about this debacle online (quite easily) because plenty of media companies and sports talk-show personalities prefer to talk more about drama than about the actual game itself, but I'll give you a brief synopsis in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 24 hours. After game 4 of the Boston-Brooklyn series, a fan threw a water bottle - with water in it - at Kyrie right before he left the court. Boston and Kyrie obviously have a complicated past, so it’s not surprising that some knucklehead, on the first night of the TD Garden being at full capacity, decided to throw a full water bottle at Kyrie from like 20 rows up. Luckily it didn’t hit Irving, because it could have resulted in a serious facial fracture of some kind. Following the game, a video surfaced of Kyrie Irving rubbing his foot on Lucky, the Celtics mascot at the mid-court line. What transpired was quite frankly one of the most embarrassing things I’ve seen around the NBA in my roughly 15 years of following it closely. Both KG and Glen “big baby” Davis responded on IG; KG talked about how disrespectful it was, and hinted at the fact that the water bottle throw was justified because of Kyrie’s actions, while big-baby essentially threatened Kyrie with violence as a result of his “disrespect” to both past and present Celtics players. Similar sentiments have been shared among many far less important Boston sports talking heads, but I won’t get into that because those people don’t deserve the time of day.
My Take
I’ve never seen two self-proclaimed tough guys be so torn up over something so miniscule like Kyrie rubbing his foot on the Celtics logo. Kyrie had a rough departure from Boston, and was hearing boos, along with the chant “fuck you Kyrie” virtually every time he touched the basketball. Then, after he put up 39 points in a super important game 4 in the NBA playoffs, he decided to (metaphorically) talk just a little bit of shit back to the fans, and all hell breaks loose; Boston fans are crying, Big Baby is commenting on IG, and KG is showing that you can still be really insecure while being one of the most physically tough players to ever play in the league. Let’s not forget, also, that these are the same guys who say that “today’s players are soft”. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal what Kyrie did, and I certainly don’t think it’s enough to justify getting a water bottle thrown at him. It’s not some unwritten rule, and he didn’t do anything outright disrespectful to the city of Boston, the organization, the fans, or the players; he simply retaliated in an insignificant and harmless way to some pretty intense trash talk that he took to the chin all game. He’s not allowed to do that? That SCREAMS double standard. Just because these dudes are NBA players doesn’t mean we can treat them like animals.
Not only is it embarrassing from the perspective of KG and Big-Baby getting torn up by some VERY LIGHT taunting, but it’s embarrassing that they would essentially take the side of the fan in this case. Especially given the context and timing in which this incident occurred (racist fan comments in Utah, popcorn thrown at Westbrook, etc), it’s absurd that KG and Davis would back up the actions of this fan by only talking about what Kyrie did. Really disappointed in both KG and Big-Baby, and I honestly would’ve thought that they would be mature enough to realize that it’s bigger than basketball and that what Kyrie did can’t be placed on the same level as what that fan did; what Kyrie did was in the spirit of fun and related to the trash talk within the game, and what that fan did will get him jail time. Sit back and think about that for a second.
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