Why Another Fan Running Onto The Court To Hug An NBA Player Should Make You Worrry

There’s no reason to condemn a little kid. But I wouldn’t blame an NBA player if he were a little more worried about security at his next game after a child ran onto the court to hug Carmelo Anthony during Monday night’s Knicks game in New Orleans.

The hug is being almost universally praised as adorable. All a young fan from the Big Easy wanted to do was embrace one of his favorite players. Besides, it’s hardly the worst thing the Knicks have gone through over the past year few years couple of decades.

But this isn’t about a cute, little kid anymore.

When it comes to the fan experience, basketball is unlike any other sport. MLB has a wall and security guards between the fans and field. Football has the same. Hockey has the glass shielding fans from jumping onto the ice.

Basketball — at any level, really — throws the fans into the action. Players fall into the crowd routinely. And if someone wants to purchase an expensive ticket, walking onto the floor is as simple as…well, walking onto the floor.

It’s easy as ever for Kenyon Martin’s stalker to walk onto the court to try approaching him. Or for a grown man to stroll into the middle of play because he somehow thinks it will get Kyrie Irving not to leave in free agency. Or another kid — who is old enough to know better — dashing onto the court pleading for LeBron to return to Cleveland, only to become famous and fiends with LeBron as a result.

That same thing happened on Monday night with ‘Melo.

Nothing scary happened this time. But this is just another reminder of a safety-lite sport.

Media and fans alike make sure not to glorify streakers when they run on a field. TV networks even refuse to show them on television, panning away to something else in the stadium just to make sure they don’t encourage such future behavior from others. Yet, go anywhere today — including this publication — and you’ll hear or read about how adorable it was to see a fan run onto the court in the middle of a game to hug Melo.

Surely, we can assume this kid didn’t know any better. But the next fan who runs onto the court probably will.

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