OT - Marcus Smart: appropriate penalty?

[NJRedman]

Only you can stop Redman on Redman violence.

Thats if this guy even goes to SJU.

[Irishdawg]

I just want to know what that chair said to him earlier in the year. Just because a chair was manufactured in China and has an OSU logo it thinks it can just sit on the sidelines and say whatever it wants to players.



I think in the aftermath of all this it was easy to say that it had to be something racist, because honestly what else could set a normal person off like that? However, other than Smart saying what he did to his coaches and the OSU radio show, there has been absolutely no evidence (including audio from the camera underneath the basket) that would suggest he was called something besides "a piece of crap" by the fan (who is a giant idiot, which has also been proven on multiple occassions).

Marcus Smart is a hot head who doesn't deal with failure well, and I watched him while Butler was down at Disney, and that much about him was evidenced when he picked up a technical against Purdue because the calls weren't going his way during the 2nd half and one of the Purdue players said something to him after he got a foul called on him and Smart blew up, got T'd up, and Purdue came back from down 20 and made it a close game because Smart sidelined himself with that technical.

What the fan did was wrong, but Smart's starting to creep into Marshall Henderson behavior right now, and that's not good for him or his team.

[RedStormNation]

http://nypost.com/2014/02/13/internet-m ... nsightful/

Thank god for this guy making sense. Exactly what I think on this topic. Reverse the races and no way would this become a race issue. It's just an immature player and a stupid fan. Nothing more.

[sciencejay]

What stood out to me as I watched it live and then on the replay was that MS was trying to get up and was facing the court (away from the 'fan'). Then his head snapped around as if he heard something significant--was it the POC or a racist comment? I don't know. But it struck me that his focus was on getting back onto the court and whatever that guy yelled made him change course. I don't think "Go Tech" would have caused MS to turn around like that.

MS was obviously frustrated because the game had just been sealed. It was the end of the game, so he was exhausted physically, he's got to be exhausted emotionally due to the team's and his own poor performance over recent games. And then he heard something to make his head snap around like that.

I'm not giving Smart a pass--three games is fair in my opinion. But I think the 'fan' should be banned for the rest of the season (most teams have only 3-4 home games left, so the punishment would be the same) and his seats should be moved further from the edge of the court. That guy is not a fan but is a complete coward for yelling something profane at a 19 year old kid who just lost another basketball game. I just can't imagine yelling personal things like that at a player from an opposing team (or my favorite team either). There is no place for that in sports--boo, yell in support of your team's players, but when an opposing player is four feet away from you, what would motivate a grown man to yell something personal like that? Fans are not part of the game, and paid admission does not change that. End. Of. Story.

[RedStormNation]

What stood out to me as I watched it live and then on the replay was that MS was trying to get up and was facing the court (away from the 'fan'). Then his head snapped around as if he heard something significant--was it the POC or a racist comment? I don't know. But it struck me that his focus was on getting back onto the court and whatever that guy yelled made him change course. I don't think "Go Tech" would have caused MS to turn around like that.

MS was obviously frustrated because the game had just been sealed. It was the end of the game, so he was exhausted physically, he's got to be exhausted emotionally due to the team's and his own poor performance over recent games. And then he heard something to make his head snap around like that.

I'm not giving Smart a pass--three games is fair in my opinion. But I think the 'fan' should be banned for the rest of the season (most teams have only 3-4 home games left, so the punishment would be the same) and his seats should be moved further from the edge of the court. That guy is not a fan but is a complete coward for yelling something profane at a 19 year old kid who just lost another basketball game. I just can't imagine yelling personal things like that at a player from an opposing team (or my favorite team either). There is no place for that in sports--boo, yell in support of your team's players, but when an opposing player is four feet away from you, what would motivate a grown man to yell something personal like that? Fans are not part of the game, and paid admission does not change that. End. Of. Story.

It still sounds like you would bet your money on him being racist. I have a huge problem with that. In this day in age that word gets thrown around like Kim Kardashian at an NBA party. Shocker coming up: not everything is racist. The only evidence people have is their own biased thoughts about him. It's prejudice in the purest form. Can someone please answer me if McDermott snapped his head around fast at a black fan and shoved him, would we be saying "Oh, the black fan was clearly being racist and that's why he got mad"? Absolutely not. And we all know that deep down. People are claiming he's racist by BEING racist themselves towards the fan. That's what blows my mind. Not every white guy that pisses off a minority is being "racist". He may very well have called him something derogatory, but why does it have to be racial automatically? I think he is an older white guy in Texas and as such he was stereotyped. The fact that his head snapped back shows it was racist? That would never hold up as a real argument come on. He easily could have called him a p*ssy and I think his head would have snapped back just as hard. It was not just what the guy said…it was the combination of the moment in the game when his team was going to lose and they just got upset by a bad Texas Tech team. When you are pissed you just lost an awful game and a fan yells something at you, that can push you over the edge. But saying that same thing whatever it was during the first 10 minutes of the game would not garner the same reaction.

And as the article said, why would it even be racial? Texas Tech the team he lives for has a black coach and tons of black players. It literally makes no sense. No evidence, and it doesn't even make logical sense. Unless you dig up his KKK ID card and get audio from the incident, I will call BS on those who just assume he's some evil racist. Those people are just as bad as the racist whites who called Sherman a thug. Same thing. Not all white people can be assumed to be racist and not all black people can be assumed to be thugs.