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“Only in Philadelphia” – Knicks Fan Allegedly Spits at Trae Young, Dodgers and Astros Fans Fight in the Stands

Whenever a Philly fan does something stupid, everybody likes to point out that idiot fan behavior takes place everywhere.
And it’s true! It’s 100% true. Just in the past 36 hours we’ve had other incidents beyond the Philly popcorn thrower, like this fight here, between Dodgers and Astros fans:
After all that’s happened in the last couple of years, it’s good to see Dodger fans and Astros fans getting along again. pic.twitter.com/ZoDC1Ij7Jt
— Jared Carrabis (@Jared_Carrabis) May 27, 2021
Only in Philly!
And here’s one from the Knicks game, which shows a fan allegedly spitting on Trae Young:
Did a Knicks fan spit on Trae Young? 😬
(@jamosramos4 ) pic.twitter.com/iOm44o0rgG
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) May 27, 2021
This one is harder to confirm. We have video of the popcorn dropper leaning over and dumping the bag on Russell Westbrook, but this video is circulating without a full view of the guy’s face, so we need a different angle to be able to confirm if he actually did try to spit on Young. There’s a chance he was just yelling at him and got really frothy. The projectile appears to hit the woman sitting in front of him.
But if you go to ESPN right now, the popcorn story is a top headline. Nothing about the alleged spitting incident. Fox News picked it up, and Sports Illustrated, and a couple of other big outlets, but from a brief Googling and social media perusal, it would seem as though the Westbrook popcorn story is getting a lot more attention.
It’s always the case. Philly fans doing something dumb and we hear about Santa Claus and the snow balls. Baseball fans clobber each other? Nada. Knicks fan reportedly spitting on a player? Attention, but not as much as us.
It doesn’t excuse popcorn thrower for his childish and embarrassing behavior, but if the media is gonna write about Philly fans, they have to give attention to these other incidents as well. It happens everywhere and it always has. We have a large contingent of asshole fans, like The F Lot Crew, but the problems aren’t exclusive to us.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com