In the first round of the 2021 NBA playoffs, we’ve already had five fan incidents. All five have been totally unnecessary, totally moronic, and some even resulted in arrests.

Here in Philadelphia, we had a jabroni dump popcorn on Russell Westbrook’s head as he was walking into the tunnel. The incident got a lot of attention, probably for two reasons. Number one, it was the first of the five occurrences that took place. Number two, the national media piled on and went with the “Philly fans” stereotype, even though the Trae Young spitting incident was part of the same 24-hour news cycle.

After that, we had verbal abuse from Jazz fans, a Celtics fan threw a bottle at Kyrie Irving, and a Wizards fan ran onto the court in DC, resulted in him being tackled by security.

All of the behavior was completely idiotic, but if we’re ranking them from worst to least worst, for the purposes of keeping our national media priorities straight, it would go like this:

1. The Utah Jazz verbal abusers

These losers were kicked out after verbally abusing Ja Morant’s family during Game Two of the Utah/Memphis series. There’s no audio of the incident, but Morant’s father said that the language was racist, and if that’s the case, then these people go straight to the top of the list, because there’s nothing worse. They were permanently banned from the arena and the Jazz provided courtside seats and lodging to Morant’s family for Game Five while apologizing on behalf of the franchise.

2. The Knicks spitter

The spitter comes in at #2 because there’s nothing more disgusting and disrespectful than hurling bodily fluid at someone. And this took place during the tail-end of a pandemic, with the guy literally pulling down his mask in order to aim at Trae Young (and miss).

This fan was also banned from Madison Square Garden. Young declined to press charges.

3. The Celtics Bottle Thrower

This genius decided to throw a water bottle at Kyrie Irving and got himself arrested and charged with assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon. The 21 year old is set to be arraigned this week and here’s a new angle of the incident that wasn’t originally available:

4. Sixers popcorn dumper/Wizards court stormer (tie)

We couldn’t decide whether the popcorn dumper or the court stormer was worse, so they ended up in a tie.

RE: the popcorn dumper, here’s the thing:

It’s not about the popcorn being harmless. If I gotta’ hear “it’s just popcorn” one more time, my head is gonna explode. The point is not about how much the object weighs or how much damage it can do, it’s about being blatantly disrespectful to an athlete who is walking off the floor, invading their space, and doing something to them without any fear of direct retaliation. Like Westbrook said, the popcorn dumper would never do that in public, because he’d get his ass kicked.

As far as the court stormer, this guy directly goes into a space that belongs to the only the players and the refs. He was probably drunk and doing something his “buddy” dared him to do, but you can’t go on the damn floor and you can’t try to touch the rim or doing anything like that. Plus, there have been past incidents of people going into the field of play and then attacking players, so you gotta take these types of incidents seriously.

In conclusion

So what’s the point of this exercise? The point is that the “only in Philadelphia” cliche is officially dead. This ridiculous stuff happens everywhere, and you have to go down the list and then consider the amount of media coverage each incident got. Sixers popcorn guy got a TON of national headlines, even though I think we’d all agree the incident was rather tame compared to the others.

Jamie was on top of it:

That’s not to the excuse the popcorn guy’s behavior, because it was uncalled for and disrespectful, but the incidents that took place in the northeast, in large media markets, with video assets readily available, typically draw a lot more coverage. The Jazz story didn’t pick up as much steam because it’s in Utah and there’s no b-roll or no audio of the incident. And then the media latches on to existing narratives, like “trashy Philly fans” or the racism undertones in Boston, which Kyrie Irving touched on before Game Three. That seemed like a powder keg waiting to go off, and it did when Irving stepped on the C’s logo after the Brooklyn win. Again, that doesn’t justify bottle thrower doing what he did, but you could feel the tension just watching that game on TV.

Anyway, all five incidents were idiotic, and the fans were punished, so maybe people can settle down now and start behaving like adults. The “only in Philly” thing is now dead.