Kent Bazemore Responded To Bradley Beal Going Off On Him: ‘I Guess You Can’t Joke Anymore’

There are plenty of fascinating playoff races taking place between teams across the NBA, but the individual battle that is the most hotly contested is the one for this season’s scoring title between Stephen Curry and Bradley Beal. Curry, at 31.9 points per game, leads Beal by a half point for the 2020-21 NBA scoring title and the two have not shied away from talking about their desire to earn that honor.

Over the weekend, Steph admitted that he was keeping tabs on Beal’s 50-point night prior to going off for 49 in three quarters himself to keep his lead on the Wizards star. During that 50-point outing, Beal injured his hamstring that caused him to miss Monday night’s game with the Hawks, and took away an opportunity to try and reel Curry in further. In the morning during the Warriors media availability, Kent Bazemore decided it was a good idea to make a joke about Beal’s hamstring injury, saying “we got guys hurting hamstrings trying to keep up” with Steph’s scoring pace.

That, unsurprisingly, didn’t sit well with Beal, who then launched a string of tweets ripping Bazemore while the Warriors were playing the Jazz, torching him for making light of an injury and also making sure to point out it was Steph who was tracking Beal and ensuring he kept up. After the game, Bazemore was made aware of Beal’s tweets in his postgame interview and responded with a shrug and “I guess you can’t joke anymore.”

I’m sure Bazemore didn’t mean any harm with his comment, but he also should know that jokes about injuries never go over well. It is one subject that athletes don’t take lightly and once it made its way to Beal, him responding as he did shouldn’t have come as a real surprise to anyone. This will, one would think, be the end of the Beal-Baze beef as Kent seems to want it all to just be over, but it can serve as a reminder that poking fun at someone’s injury is never a great idea.