A fan courtside got into it with the Lakers’ Rajon Rondo late in the third quarter Friday night, while the Lakers were getting blown out, and when Rajon Rondo pointed him out the fan pushed his hand away.
That’s an automatic ejection for the fan. You can see it here:
The Lakers were getting blown out, down 32 at the time, when play was stopped for a minute to clean up a spilled drink courtside. During that time Rondo and the fan verbally went back and forth, although it’s unclear what was said.
Play resumed, Rondo drifted to the weakside corner, and when play stopped because the ball went out of bounds on the opposite side of the court, Rondo pointed to the fan (it does look like a finger gun from the camera angle, but Rondo appears just to be pointing the fan out). At that point, the fan pushes Rondo’s hand away.
Reaching out and touching a player will get a fan ejected in any NBA arena.
Seats near the court in every NBA arena have a postcard-sized warning sitting on them saying fans are subject to ejection for verbal abuse of players or officials, or touching someone on the court. It’s one thing to heckle and cheer, but there are basic lines of common decency that cannot be crossed and should not be tolerated by the teams or league (and that happens more than you might think). And touching players is strictly off-limits.
This was not the only drama of the evening as Anthony Davis and Dwight Howard had a little pushing match on the bench in the first half, but after the game both said they patched it up. Then there was the Lakers’ poor play, which has them 0-2 to start the season, with both losses at home.
