The Sixers absolutely stunk up the joint on Thursday night, but there’s a sidebar story worth sharing. I have MORE INFORMATION that allows me to elaborate on the article I published the other day, titled “What We’ve Learned About the Viral “Sixth Man” and James Harden Exchange.”

If you missed it, Alan Horwitz, the super-fan who sits in the front row next to the Sixers’ bench, went up to Harden right before the start of the third quarter on Monday night and said something to him, but Harden basically blew him off. It was an awkward scene shown on television and the video clip got nearly 400,000 views on Twitter:

The result of this was a lot of “stay in your seat and leave the players alone” sentiment, which I would agree with. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a fan or how much clout or money you have, because people shouldn’t be leaving their seats to go talk to the players.

HOWEVER – we also noted the other night that this was not a contentious exchange. Horwitz was actually trying to tell Harden that he was going to get his mother a courtside ticket for Thursday night’s game against the Nets, which he followed through on. If you look through footage from the game, you can see Harden’s mom sitting right next to Alan in the front row:

What happened here is that Harden had no idea who Horwitz was on Monday night. He noticed a guy walking up to him and saying something about his mom, hence the awkward exchange. But Horwitz was trying to tell him that he would provide the hook up, as explained here by a source who was privy to the conversation:

“Alan is a pretty generous guy. When someone asks if he could spare a ticket, he rarely says no. Plus, he uses the tickets to help charitable organizations. A third party in the Sixers orbit asked the Sixth Man if he might have an extra ticket for James Harden’s mother for (Thursday night’s) debacle. Alan was telling Harden, when the camera caught them speaking, that he agreed to give his mother a ticket for the game. Harden didn’t know who he was nor did he likely know where his mother’s ticket was coming from.”

So that’s the story. Horwitz wasn’t trying to get up in Harden’s face, he was trying to communicate something to him.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s okay to leave your seat and walk up to a player at the scorer’s table, right? I think we’re dealing with mutually exclusivity here. More than one thing can be true. Alan was trying to help out and be generous while probably crossing a boundary at the same time. Most of the players know him and will give him handshakes or high fives, but Harden just got here, so he’s probably thinking “who the hell is this guy and why is he up in my grill?”

Anyway, that should clear things up. I know Horwitz was getting ripped. People were calling him “privileged” and all of that, and saying that he doesn’t belong on the floor and blah blah. Regardless, he was doing a good thing and there was a goofy miscommunication here, which resulted in the viral awkwardness of Monday night.

Glad we could clear this up. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.