As the Raptors’ deficit grew bigger and playoff elimination creeped closer, the enemy from Philadelphia picked out a face in the Toronto crowd and delivered a message.
This was a couple of weeks back at Scotiabank Arena, where Nav Bhatia, the city’s basketball superfan, was sitting in his usual seat along the Bay Street baseline for Game 6 of the Raptors-Sixers series. At the moment in question Joel Embiid, the Sixers center who’d been booed almost every time he touched the ball during the series, seemed in the mood to return some of the animus.
“I think we were down 15 points. Embiid came over and said to me, ‘Go home. Go home, superfan. You’re done,’” said Bhatia in a recent interview. “People were picking on (Embiid), and I think he was frustrated. So I said, ‘I’m a Raptors fan, buddy. We don’t go home.’ Then I showed him my ring.”
If a reference to Toronto’s 2019 NBA championship remains a compelling trump card in good-natured trash talk, the back and forth between Toronto’s fans and Philadelphia’s MVP was far from over. Bhatia, for his part, did not like what happened next. He didn’t appreciate that Embiid extended his arms and airplaned back on defense when the game was out of reach.
“Embiid incites the fans; he shouldn’t do that,” Bhatia said.
Bhatia said he was even more disappointed when Toronto’s fan base showered Embiid with a profane chant.
“You can cheer, but you don’t have to say, ‘Eff that. Eff this guy.’ Don’t do that. It’s not a decent way to cheer on your team,” Bhatia said. “I feel very uncomfortable when they do that. There are young kids, there are eight-year-old kids in the stands. There are five-year-old girls sitting there. That’s a bad example for society. But somebody starts it, and then the people start chanting. It’s not necessary.”
If it’s not needed, it’s one in a series of recent events in which the relationship between the NBA’s players and its fans has shown signs of troubling strain. In the past few weeks alone a handful of prominent players have expressed their discontent with the behavior of the ticket-buying public. Embiid, for one, criticized Raptorland’s new penchant for group F-bombing. “I don’t think that should be OK,” he said.
Golden State’s Draymond Green flipped the double bird to the crowd in Memphis when he was booed after taking an elbow to his right eye that drew blood and left a mark.
“You’re going to boo somebody who took an elbow to the eye, blood running down their face, you should get flipped off,” Green said. “It felt really good to flip ’em off … If they’re going to be that nasty, I can be nasty, too.”
Brooklyn’s Kyrie Irving, meanwhile, extended the double middle finger and lobbed various unprintables at fans in Boston who heckled him incessantly.
“When people start yelling ‘p—y’ and ‘b—h’ and ‘f— you’ and all this, there’s but so much you can take as a competitor,” Irving said.
In the heated atmosphere of a high-stakes sporting event, there has always been the possibility of conflict between the performers and the audience.
This week, the death of Bob Lanier, the 73-year-old basketball Hall of Famer who became known as one of the great gentlemen of the sport, brought into social media circulation a clip of an infamous NBA playoff game in 1977 wherein brawling players , including Lanier, spilled into the crowd and fought with fans. No one was even ejected from that game. And 45 years later, it’s safe to say the league’s outlook on such incidents has changed dramatically. In 2004, when Indiana Pacers players and fans of the Detroit Pistons clashed in a melee that became known as the Malice at the Palace, nine players were suspended a combined 146 games in a statement of zero tolerance.
There are those who wonder if the current tension between the performers and the audience, if it’s not checked, could escalate into a similar incident.
“It’s still a possibility,” said James DeMeo, CEO of Unified Sports and Entertainment Security Consulting, speaking of the potential of a Malice at the Palace 2.0. “I think we have some troublesome issues in society, both domestic and international. And unfortunately, some of those ills in society are spilling over into live sporting events… The leagues can never let their guard down.”
Perhaps it’s only natural that Toronto’s NBA crowd had another less-than-flattering moment in the spotlight this spring, this after its reputation took a justifiable hit when swaths of the throng cheered Kevin Durant’s series-ending Achilles tendon injury in the 2019 NBA Finals.
Pandemic-related regulations around public gatherings have been generally stricter in Canada than in the United States, and this year’s playoff run marked the first post-season games in Toronto with a full-capacity crowd since its title run. Last year, when the NBA playoffs were played before packed arenas in the US, there was a rash of incidents that marred the occasion: A fan in Philadelphia threw popcorn at Russell Westbrook, then of the Washington Wizards; another in New York spat at Atlanta’s Trae Young; yet another in Boston threw a water bottle at Irving.
Not that tensions haven’t continued to simmer. Last weekend, fans in Dallas were accused of harassing and making physical contact with family members of Chris Paul, the Phoenix point guard.
For Bhatia, it’s a lamentable trend that he hopes will reverse itself as the effects of the pandemic wane. Not that excessive alcohol consumption and the preponderance of in-game sports betting, factors that have been cited by observers attempting to explain the testiness of the NBA throng, are likely to wane any time soon.
“It’s a shame what’s going on,” Bhatia said with a sigh. “I think it’s going to be a process (before it improves).”
Dan Donovan, a stadium security expert, said the “privilege mindset” of those who pay the NBA’s steep ticket prices is a factor in fan behaviour.
“Definitely post-pandemic you’re seeing individuals with a lot of pent-up emotion. But it all goes back to that, ‘I buy a ticket and I have this right to act like not a proper person,’” said Donovan. “It is alarming to see the way our fans are acting just verbally. It’s inappropriate … and we’re seeing more of it.”
Bhatia, who has signed the check for prime seats since the franchise’s inaugural season, said it’s important to remember that even the biggest spenders shouldn’t be exempt from the NBA’s fan code of conduct.
“(Buying expensive tickets) doesn’t give us the right to do anything disrespectful,” Bhatia said. “We still have to respect the players. Yes, they’re from a different team, but you have to respect them. You’re lowering your team by picking on them in a bad way.”
There’s a fine line, he said, between talking trash and tarnishing the relationship between players and fans.
“I’ve been picking on the (opposing) players for the longest time. Everybody knows that. The opposing team knows that; the referees know that. But I always stay within the limits of respectability,” Bhatia said. “I’m never personal about that. I’m never, ‘Eff this, and eff that.’ I don’t expect us to say that, the fans, and I don’t expect the players to do that. But sometimes the fans are crossing the limits, and I don’t think that’s needed to cheer on our team.”
As for his Game 6 war of words with Embiid, while the Sixers got the win, Bhatia got in his verbal jabs before Toronto’s overachieving season concluded.
“I said I think he still remembers that (Kawhi Leonard) shot in 2019. He still dreams of that every time he’s on the Raptors’ court,” Bhatia said. “He didn’t use any bad language with me, but he started it up; I didn’t. I have started it up. But he’s a talented player, and I respect him. We have to respect the players.
“I’m a very proud Canadian, and we don’t do things like that. When people go low, we go high. You have the whole night to cheer, make noise, wave the flag, do whatever you need to do. But you don’t have to use your tongue in a dirty way, ‘Eff that. Eff the referee.’ Don’t do that. It’s not necessary.”
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Anyone can read Conversations, but to contribute, you should be a registered Torstar account holder. If you do not yet have a Torstar account, you can create one now (it is free)