After winning the NBA’s MVP award this past season, James Harden has enjoyed himself this summer, which has included various visits to some late night establishments around the country.
Harden’s latest stop on the summer nightclub circuit came in Scottsdale, Arizona and it resulted in Harden finding his way onto TMZ, which is never a particularly good thing. According to TMZ, a woman at Mint nightclub alleges someone in Harden’s group got into a fight outside the club and she began filming it on her phone. That is when Harden stepped in and grabbed her by the wrist, took her phone, and proceeded to toss it onto the roof.
She claims Harden was trying to prevent her from selling the footage to TMZ, and that a member of his entourage paid her $200 and he paid her another $300. The woman then climbed on the roof, got her phone, and then says she went to the hospital for treatment on her wrist. Naturally, she still went on to give TMZ the video that can be seen here.
The footage is grainy at best, but there is a bearded man that can be seen (TMZ kindly pauses the video and points an arrow at him) and the phone definitely gets launched onto the roof. TMZ spoke with Scottsdale police who said Harden was named in the report but has not been named as a suspect, while Harden’s camp has not responded to the allegations.
If that is indeed Harden who does the phone throwing, this would be the second time in a month that an NBA star has launched someone’s phone after they were taking a photo or video of them, as J.R. Smith found his way into headlines for a similar incident in New York. In both cases, the NBA player in question should probably not be the one trying to handle things themselves, particularly Harden, who we know is there with an entourage and should have one of the people with him be the one to stop something being filmed.
