NBA

Foul Fans: NBA Players Speak Out Against Verbal Abuse in Arenas

Russell Westbrook’s confrontation with a Utah Jazz fan last month exposed a corrosive problem in NBA arenas and the challenge the league faces in protecting its players

NBA

Foul Fans: NBA Players Speak Out Against Verbal Abuse in Arenas

Russell Westbrook’s confrontation with a Utah Jazz fan last month exposed a corrosive problem in NBA arenas and the challenge the league faces in protecting its players

By Tyler TynesApril 19, 2019, 10:30 am UTC • 12 min

Russell Westbrook could no longer ignore the insults or contain his anger. On March 11, in a road game against the Utah Jazz, the Oklahoma City guard was visibly upset as he stood near the end of his team’s bench. “You think I’m playing? I swear to God,” he called out to someone in the crowd. “I swear to God. I’ll fuck you up! You and your wife. I’ll fuck you up.”

He told reporters after the game that it hadn’t been the first time he’d endured verbal abuse while playing in Salt Lake City. “Every time I come here, it’s a lot of disrespectful things that’s said.” He explained his reaction as a response to a fan who’d told him “to get down on your knees like you’re used to,” comments he considered to be “racial.” Before a playoff game against the Jazz last year in Salt Lake City, Westbrook called for a member of arena security after a fan had called him a “boy” as he warmed up.

A 45-year-old Jazz fan named Shane Keisel told a local television station after the game in March that he exchanged words with Westbrook from his seat, and thought he and Westbrook were “kind of having fun” until things escalated. “I never said a swear word to him, and everybody in the vicinity will say it,” Keisel said, before adding that he thought Westbrook was “classless.”

As he addressed reporters after the game, Westbrook said he didn’t regret his actions and would no longer be silent when confronted with verbal abuse from fans, adding that he believed NBA players needed more protection in arenas. “There’s got to be some consequences for those types of people that come to the game just to say and do whatever they want to say, and I don’t think it’s fair to the players,” he said.

The next day, the Jazz announced that Keisel had been banned for life for violating the NBA code of conduct. The team’s investigation, which included interviews with eyewitnesses and video reviews, determined that Keisel used “excessive and derogatory verbal abuse directed at a player.” The NBA fined Westbrook $25,000 for “directing profanity and threatening language to a fan.” Thunder players Patrick Patterson and Raymond Felton corroborated Westbrook’s version of the exchange, and several Jazz players spoke out in support of him. Jazz owner Gail Miller addressed the crowd before the team’s next home game, saying Utah was “not a racist community” and called for players to be treated with more respect.

Westbrook’s confrontation was not an isolated incident. On March 29, the Celtics announced a two-year ban for a fan, a minor, after Golden State Warriors center DeMarcus Cousins said the fan had directed racist language toward him in Boston on January 26. In an interview with Yahoo Sports, Cousins said he disagreed with the NBA’s decision to fine Westbrook. “We’re the product,” Cousins told Yahoo. “We push this league, so I don’t understand. When does our safety, when does it become important?” After the ban was announced, Celtics guard Marcus Smart told the Boston Globe that he had been the subject of racist abuse from a fan early in his career. “I’ve dealt with a lot of things, here in my own city, and out of this city,” Smart said. “I get it. I’ve seen it. I’m not surprised, and it has to be fixed, plain and simple.”

The NBA has embraced its reputation as a progressive-minded league, and its players have used their platforms to espouse their beliefs on a variety of topics, including racism. But the Westbrook incident is an example of the challenges the league faces as it attempts to address fan behavior in arenas, especially when it involves abusive and racist language directed toward players. The NBA is unique among professional sports leagues given the close proximity of fans to the court. Its players are among the most well known and high profile in the world: They’re celebrities, brand ambassadors, pillars of their communities and cultural influencers. They’re also the most publicly exposed athletes, and they have to deal with the challenges and responsibilities that come with that notoriety.

Current and former players agree with Westbrook’s assessment about the need to protect players from racist abuse in their workplace. “We are human beings that are at our job every day,” Milwaukee Bucks guard Malcolm Brogdon tells me. He later adds that fans “don’t see us as human beings. They see us as entertainers. That’s a view and perspective that has to change.” Etan Thomas, who retired in 2011 after playing nine seasons in the NBA, doesn’t think it should take a reaction from a player to bring attention to the issue. Had Westbrook done nothing, he says, “nobody would even say anything. It would go on like regular.” The league has adopted new security measures in recent years to report and investigate these types of incidents, and it is increasing its messaging to fans about unacceptable conduct at games. But this behavior has persisted throughout the league’s history, and it is not easily eradicated. The better question is whether league officials are adequately responding to the concerns of its employees.

A day after the Thunder game, Jazz players held a meeting with team president Steve Starks. As Jazz guard Kyle Korver recounted in The Players’ Tribune, his teammates defended Westbrook and shared their own experiences of interactions with fans that they felt were degrading. “Guys were just sick and tired of it,” Korver wrote. One player’s mother called him after the game, terrified that he might be in danger by living in Salt Lake City. Another likened the scenes from that night to being at a zoo. Korver, a 16-year veteran, felt compelled to speak about how his experience as a white player in the NBA dramatically differs from his black colleagues.

“I was safe on the court that one night in Utah,” he wrote, “and Russell wasn’t.”

The impetus for change will come, fairly or not, from the players. They will be the catalysts, and their pleas for a safe, comfortable work environment is a simple protest combating a quiet, corrosive problem, one that is recognized by others in the league. Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens says it’s the “1 percent” of incidents that cross the line that needs to be addressed.

“There’s a couple times a year, you look back and say, ‘Really? You just said that?’”

Black athletes in professional sports have often faced difficulty claiming ownership over their labor, says Amira Rose Davis, an assistant professor at Penn State specializing in the study of race, politics, gender, and sports. “Their bodies are useful and tolerated as long as they’re doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing,” Davis says, adding that this dynamic has historically granted ownership of their labor to majority-white audiences.

David West, whose retirement last year after a championship-winning season with the Golden State Warriors capped a 15-year career, says fans at NBA games have a sense of entitlement. “It’s a sense of people legitimately feeling like because they buy a ticket, and they are in the arena, that they have a free license to say what they want to you because you are a part of the show,” West says. According to data from the 2017-18 season, more than 70 percent of the NBA’s players are black, and when those players are seen as the vehicles to provide entertainment for a predominantly white audience, they can cease to be viewed as professionals plying their trade in their workplace. Davis observes that when fans enter arenas as paying customers, they assume control over the product, which is the players. “You bought the ticket, you consumed the product, and the product is the players,” Davis says. “It’s them. It’s their bodies, not just the spectacle of the game itself.”

NBA players have taken notice. According to an anonymous poll conducted by The Athletic, 13.7 percent cited fan behavior as the league’s most pressing issue. Thomas wants a strictly enforced zero-tolerance policy. “You do what you get away with,” he says, adding that only through stronger enforcement will behavior begin to change. Fred VanVleet, a guard for the Toronto Raptors, says that playing under these conditions makes him feel like he’s a part of a monied spectacle.

“Realize that we’re still people at the end of the day,” VanVleet says. “It’s not the zoo. And when you go to the zoo, you don’t jump over the fence and taunt the tigers and shit like that. It’s real consequences behind stuff like that.”

Players have had an at-times toxic relationship with fans since the league integrated. Earl Lloyd, one of the NBA’s first black players, made his debut with the Washington Capitols in 1950. During that season, he was spat on by fans, told to “go back to Africa,” and asked to see his “tail.” One night, when the announcer read his name, a white man in the front row asked, “Do you think this nigger can play any basketball?”

These incidents are not limited to the league’s infancy. The title of William C. Rhoden’s 2006 book, 40 Million Dollar Slaves, comes from a remark a fan made to Larry Johnson during the 2000-01 season. In 2006, Knicks forward Antonio Davis climbed into the stands after a fan grabbed his wife. The fan threatened to sue Davis for $1 million if he and his wife didn’t apologize. Davis was suspended for five games, but told The Chicago Tribune, “I will never let my family be abused.”

A turning point came in 2004, during the Malice at the Palace, when a brawl broke out between fans and players during a game between the Detroit Pistons and the Indiana Pacers. The melee started after a fan threw a drink on Ron Artest (who later changed his name to Metta World Peace), who responded by charging into the stands. Nine players were suspended for a total of 146 games, including a season-long suspension for Artest. After the fracas, the NBA enacted stricter security measures in arenas, including ending the sale of alcohol before the start of the fourth quarter. The incident remains a haunting reminder for the league of the dangerous consequences of escalation. It breached the wall between fan and player, and it took years to repair the damage done to the relationship between the league and its customers. Players, however, feel that the onus is on them to exhibit restraint in the face of bad fan behavior and to tolerate the abuse that enters their workplace.

“We’re expected to be the bigger person,” VanVleet says. “And it’s unfortunate. Money is the sole deciding factor in that. We’re paid a contract, and we have to relinquish some of our rights. And some players aren’t really willing to do that all the time.”

Behind the scenes, the NBA has been taking measures to improve its security protocols. Before the 2017-18 season, the league enacted what it refers to as the “Enhanced Fan Code of Conduct” to deal with fan abuse and game disruptions. Overseeing these efforts is Jerome Pickett, the league’s chief security officer, who was hired in 2014 after a 16-year career with the Secret Service.

Part of the new system involves messaging that reminds fans, especially those sitting closest to the court, of prohibited behavior, including profanity, racist and anti-gay comments, and threats of violence. Pickett describes enforcement as a “three-legged step stool” coordinating security efforts among individual teams, league representatives, and arena staff. He wrote the league’s updated standards and protocols, and his staff coordinates with teams to oversee enforcement.

“It’s almost like federal and state law,” Pickett tells me. “We set the standards at the league office and work with the teams to ensure those standards are carried out and held.”

Once abusive behavior is detected, security officials are instructed to remove the offending fan from their seat so the game can proceed. As was the case in Salt Lake City, witnesses are interviewed, video and audio evidence is reviewed, and a determination is made about whether the offending fan will be allowed back to their seat with a warning card, ejected from the arena, or possibly permanently banned. All incidents are reported to, and investigated by, the league office.

A swift response, Pickett says, is his focus. “What we want to happen is we don’t want players to have to focus on these incidents. We want to provide as many different layers and touch points to take care of these situations if it arises, so players don’t have to deal with it. This shouldn’t be on players’ shoulders as theirs and theirs alone to bear.”

Pickett stresses that it’s a matter of not only educating fans but also informing players about how they can report instances of abuse and resolve them in a timely and appropriate manner.

Brooklyn Nets forward Jared Dudley says there needs to be better training for security personnel to keep them more alert to what constitutes mistreatment.

“What is inappropriate? What is not?” he says. “You would think that we know. Maybe it’s something that needs to be said ahead of time. But I think we know what’s right and wrong. And when people say it, it makes you cringe, or the hair on the back of your neck stick up. You know what’s right and wrong.”

Michele Roberts, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, says that players will always be at risk unless radical measures are considered—like moving the stands out of hearing range from the players. “You can’t prevent ignorance,” she says. “What you can do is respond appropriately to it.”

Pickett’s measures are a step in the right direction, but Roberts says more robust efforts are required. The league needs to implement a zero-tolerance policy and make clear to fans the consequences of abusive behavior. It requires transparent efforts to eliminate racism from basketball’s arenas, or else abusive fans will largely go unpunished.

“The fans should understand if they taunt and get caught they are out, and out for good,” Roberts says. “That’s the message I’ve been sending to the league that they need to hear. We’ll see. I know they hear me. We’ll find out if they’re listening to me.”

NBA players are not alone in confronting this behavior. Raheem Sterling, a forward for Manchester City and the English national team, has been outspoken about racism in European soccer. During a game between England and Montenegro on March 25, fans made monkey noises when Sterling and other black players touched the ball. Adam Jones, a veteran outfielder, has called out racism in Major League Baseball ballparks, and P.K. Subban, one of the NHL’s biggest stars, has been the recipient of racist abuse.

These incidents are symptoms of a larger problem; localizing racism in this way—by focusing on a particular sport or city—undersells the scope of the issue. No league can rid itself of this conduct by merely changing its protocols or procedures. And while players continue to speak out about these offenses, it will require more concerted efforts from power brokers in their organizations—something Jazz forward Ekpe Udoh hinted at in a roundtable discussion with his teammates Korver, Georges Niang, and Thabo Sefolosha several weeks after Westbrook left Salt Lake City.

“I’m appreciative of what [Jazz ownership has] done, but, you know this wasn’t the first [and] may not be the last time,” Udoh said. “But if [Gail Miller] can create some type of change. She’s a wealthy woman; she can hop on the phone with 29 other owners and other sports owners and try to hold them accountable. And now that she’s put herself out there, it’s up to the players to hold the organization accountable.”

Roberts cautions that the NBA is not immune to the problems in everyday American life. This is basketball’s issue because it is America’s issue. She says it shouldn’t be surprising that this has found its way to basketball’s doorstep.

“There’s no reason to think basketball, or sports, should be immune to the way we are treating each other and the disrespect we are displaying toward each other,” Roberts says. “To say the league isn’t doing enough? I can always say that. And I always do. But I’m not pretending we are divorced from the problems our society is experiencing as a whole. Has there been an uptick? You’re darn right it has. But has there been an uptick in walking while black, gardening while black, lawyering while black? Yes. … We have a problem in this country. And it’s expressing itself everywhere, including our basketball arenas.”

Tyler Tynes