The Oklahoma City Thunder and the Denver Nuggets might have played the NBA’s game of the year on Thursday night. The Thunder had a torrid comeback behind Paul George shooting fireballs out of his hands, but in the end, the Nuggets were able to defend their home court on a game-winning three by Gary Harris.
It was an outstanding game, one where seemingly everyone involved had a massive night. It was everything fans want in a basketball game, but for one fan in particular, it wasn’t quite enough. That fan ostensibly had courtside seats, and thought it would be fun to yell in Russell Westbrook’s face after things came to a conclusion.
Westbrook, in a reaction to this happening, put his left hand on the fan and shoved him away from him before looking bewildered at what was going down.
A fan got in Russell Westbrook's face on the court after the Thunder loss. pic.twitter.com/AwsPKPUYNu
— ESPN (@espn) February 2, 2018
Obviously this is a really tough situation for an NBA player to be in, because they should never put their hands on a fan, but you also do have the right to defend yourself. If there has ever been a situation where the league would be willing to give a pass to a player who gets into any type of physical altercation with a fan, though, it would almost certainly be something like this, where a player was acting out a self-defense against a fan who made their way onto the floor.
The league has made it clear that doing something like this towards a fan isn’t something that it will tolerate, but this is kind of uncharted territory, so it will be interesting to see if Westbrook ends up getting punished for this with a fine or a suspension.
