On Tuesday, the NBA announced that former Denver Nugget and current Portland Trail Blazer center Jusuf Nurkic was fined $40,000 for throwing a fan’s phone after the game. If you just watched the video and had no idea what prompted Nurkic to react like that, then you were probably shocked to see a player confront a fan in such an aggressive manner. However, after learning what the fan said, Nurkic’s reaction is much more understandable.
It appears that the fan said some truly vulgar things about Nurkic’s grandmother, who passed away two years ago. Given that information, Jamal Murray expressed disappointment that Nurkic was the one punished for the confrontation, and sent out the below tweet.
While players are expected to display professionalism, even when dealing with rowdy and disrespectful fans, it seems pretty obvious that this particular fan crossed a line and that Nurkic felt like he needed to be addressed. I think it’s important to remember in situations like these that players are human beings with real emotions. Fans that feel as though they’re invincible and can say whatever they want to a player to get a rise out of them should suffer consequences, just as the player does for responding.
It’s a shame that Nurkic had to hear those things about his family while doing his job, so hopefully incidents like this shed a light on how shameful behavior like this is. And hopefully Jamal gets his wish and the fan is not allowed into the arena again.
