Sixers

What’s the Difference Between Popcorn Guy and Double Birds Guy? – It’s About Crossing an Arbitrary Line

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: May 27th, 2021 · 9:57 AM EDT

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So there were a bunch of people on social media claiming hypocrisy because we called the Sixers popcorn thrower an “embarrassment” but would like to see the guy who flipped Russell Westbrook the double birds ring the bell.

The incidents are completely different, but to rewind, in case you’re living under a rock and didn’t see it, some guy decided to dump popcorn on Westbrook’s head while he was walking off the floor, injured, in the second half of last night’s game.

We didn’t have this angle initially, but here’s the guy leaning over and doing the dumping:

This guy better be banned from @WellsFargoCtr. Philly fans already get a bad wrap around sports, and this is why. Just completely disrespectful. #Sixers | #RussellWestbrook pic.twitter.com/eoquaTP6GX

— Justin Persicketti (@j_persicketti) May 27, 2021

The Wells Fargo Center put out a statement attributed to Valerie Camillo after the game, calling the incident “classless” and “unacceptable.”

Westbrook was asked about it and gave a lengthy answer, which I truncated here:

“To be blatantly honest, this shit is getting out of hand, especially for me. The amount of disrespect, the amount of, just fans just doing whatever the fuck they want to do. It’s out of pocket, seriously. In any other setting, I’m all for the fans enjoying the game and having fun. It’s part of sports, I get it. But there are certain things that cross the line. In another setting, a fan wouldn’t come up and throw popcorn on my head, because he knows what would happen.”

…

“For me, there are a lot of incidents where fans, they say whatever, and the consequences for me are a lot more instrumental than to the fans in the stands because they feel they are untouchable…. To get food thrown on top of me, it’s just bullshit.”

Westbrook is right; if somebody came up to him on the street and dumped popcorn on his head, that person would probably get their ass kicked. But this guy was in the stands and knew there wasn’t going to be any sort of retaliation, unless Westbrook was able to turn around, climb up the stairs, identify the guy, and then pummel him ala Malice at the Palace. It’s usually a one-way street for fans, who can do things without retaliation.

My take is this:

The difference between the double birds guy and the popcorn guy is that you don’t throw things at players or on the court. That’s pretty obviously where the arbitrary line is crossed. Anything resulting in any kind of physical contact or anything that crosses into anybody’s personal space is inherently off limits, even if it’s just a harmless bag of popcorn that weighs close to nothing and does zero damage. It’s less about the specific item he was hit with and more about the fact that he was hit with something at all.

That’s how I see it. The urologist who flipped Westbrook the double birds said he did so because Westbrook told him (or his wife) to “sit down fat b****.” That’s the story he told John Clark this week. He got ejected from the game, and while the behavior was absolutely crude, it was confined. He didn’t walk onto the court. He didn’t throw anything. He didn’t leave his seats or go into Westbrook’s space or say anything about his family (not that we know of). To me, if you’re just going back and forth with a player but you keep your hands to yourself and keep the language generic, then it amounts to trash talk, which is completely different from what the popcorn guy did. There’s no rulebook explaining where the line is, but this is where I would personally draw it.

More than anything, and this is probably the real story here, these things just help perpetuate the stereotype that Philly fans are morons who can’t behave themselves. We know this stuff happens everywhere, and it did this week, because there are video clips of baseball fans fighting, and a Knicks fan allegedly spitting on Trae Young. But the national media always hones in on us, and even though that’s not fair, it’s only going to go away if we dial it back and stop giving ESPN and the blue checkmarks things to latch on to. Popcorn guy doesn’t need to be arrested or charged or put in the stocks, but he needs to be banned from the arena and never allowed back in, or else we’re sending the message that these types of actions have no consequences.