Yesterday, some of the most bizarre scenes I’ve ever seen in any sporting event took place in a basketball arena in Minneapolis.
There, the Minnesota Timberwolves not only lost their final regular-season game to the New Orleans Pelicans, they also now go into the playoff tournament this week without two of their marquee players, who threw punches during the game — but, oddly, not during a Big East-style bench brawl.
No, it was Jaden McDaniels, one of the NBA’s better defenders, who is out for several weeks (likely, the entire playoffs) after breaking a bone in his hand punching the tunnel wall at the arena in a fit of anger. Also, center Rudy Gobert punched a teammate, Kyle Anderson, in a team huddle. That earned a swift punishment from the team: Gobert was sent home in the middle of yesterday’s game and will not play the first game of the playoffs.
Having been a very amateur athlete in high school and a recreational athlete later in life, I have gotten to know the exhilaration and the frustration of competition. Never, however, have I been frustrated or angry enough to raise my hands and try to strike or destroy something.
I can’t say whether or not it is because of my better nature or whether it was the way I was raised, but I know it never crossed my mind to erupt into the kind of violence exhibited by Gobert and McDaniels: two professional athletes paid to be part of a team, and paid very well to be good teammates to the rest of the roster.
I can’t help feeling as though this could be a life-altering circumstance for these two players. The NBA is a very image-conscious league which pretty much ended the career of Gilbert Arenas when he paraded around Washington, D.C. with unlicensed handguns and did the same when Craig Hodges criticized the 1991 Gulf War.
I don’t think it’s a good look for these two players.
