The security at NBA games must be a lot like the Los Angeles Lakers’ defense as of late: Suspect and questionable.
You’d hope that the league’s superstars would be safe from crazed fans rushing the basketball court, but that’s clearly not the case judging by this video from last night’s Lakers game.
If I’m being honest, I’m surprised this kind of stuff doesn’t happen more than it actually does. For those of you that aren’t huge NBA fans, the players sometimes sit shoulder to shoulder with fans attending the game who ponied up for courtside seats.
I’ve never really liked that about the NBA, and I think it’s pretty clear now that having fans that close can lead to some issues. Regardless of where you place security, if the fans are literally sitting next to the players, what can you really do?
In this instance, it appears that it was a fan sitting adjacent to the Los Angeles Lakers bench at Crypto.com Arena that chose to run up to LeBron James. The Lakers were in-between action, and LeBron had just sat down on the bench and was putting back on his warm up shirt when the incident occurred.
The fan ran right up to LeBron as he sat down, and appeared to try and say something to the NBA star before James gave the man an impressive stiff arm. For those people that doubt LeBron could have had a career in football, just go ahead and watch this:
Whoever was filming the whole thing from the crowd provided this commentary as the man was escorted out of the building:
“Oh my God, they just kicked him out. Oh my God.”
I mean, was it that surprising that the guy got kicked out? Seems like a rather normal sequence of events to me. You bum rush an NBA player, you get thrown out of the arena. Simple as that…
Though LeBron was able to shove the man away, he was visibly upset that he was the one that had to defend himself. It appears from this different angle that he had some choice words for security guards standing in the area:
