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LA Clippers point guard Patrick Beverley was ejected from Sunday night's 114-110 loss to the Dallas Mavericks after he threw the basketball at a Mavs fan early in the fourth quarter.
Beverley said the fan told him, “F*** your mother” twice, which led to his reaction and ejection with 9:10 remaining in the game:
Replay Review (Game Crew): player altercation in Q4 of #LACatDAL. Ruling: Beverley assessed a technical foul and ejected for throwing the ball into the stands with force. pic.twitter.com/esfCU1MgKy
— NBA Official (@NBAOfficial) December 3, 2018
“I told the referee, I told the security,” Beverley told reporters, according to ESPN's Tim MacMahon. “I mean, I've never gotten ejected out of a game since I've been in the NBA. You know, I play hard, I play within the lines, of course. I play within the rules, of course. I've never been ejected in my career in the NBA, but I'm a grown man. I have morals. Of course, God is first, family is second for me, and I stand firmly behind that.
“I just, I can accept the ‘F— you, Beverley,' the ‘F— you, Pat,' but out of the lines of my mother, anybody who knows me, man, knows I'm a family-first guy, and there's some things that are unacceptable. After I told the refs, I told security, the Dallas security, told both of them and again, he said it again. So if no one going to control fans, what are we supposed to do as players?”
Don Knobler, a longtime Mavs courtside season-ticket holder told MacMahon he had a “testy exchange” with Beverley earlier during the game, but not immediately before the ejection.
According to Knobler, he did not use profanity, but admitted to insulting Beverley's mother — recalling how it all went down:
“You're a dirty player,” said Knobler after a Beverley elbow broke Dennis Smith Jr.'s tooth. Beverley responded and Knobler replied, “Your mother.”
Head coach Doc Rivers was aware of the situation, noting it isn't right, yet taking it as a part of this profession:
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“The guy said something about his mother,” said Rivers. “So, still, I told him at the end of the day, it's not right. Fans should have control as well, and they shouldn't call you names, especially what I heard he called Pat and said something about his mom, but it's tough.
“I told him, ‘This is the life we live, and you've got to turn the other cheek, even though I know it's hard.' But we can't get technicals. We just have to walk away. And then the league has to take care of stuff like that.”
This is hardly the first time Patrick Beverley has had these sort of issues, as he did just a year ago in 2017, when he was fined $25,000 by the league office for an incident with an Oklahoma City Thunder fan following a first-round series matchup.
The 6-foot-1 point guard was a member of the Houston Rockets then, and he struggled in his first road playoff game of the season, scoring only one point after an 0-for-6 performance from the field. A fan used a clapper in his face, which led to an altercation with Stuart Scaramucci, the son of a Thunder minority owner.
Tired of the trend repeating itself, Beverley explained his stance:
“This has happened to me twice,” Beverley said Sunday. “It happened to me in OKC. A fan can just walk up on me and clap in my face. It happened to me here after I tried to handle it in a different way. I let the ref know, the ref said, ‘Keep playing.' I get on a loose ball, have a guy dive from the 3-point line to jump on me, and then a guy says it again while security is there, so there's only so much you can take.
“Of course, I'm not praising me getting kicked out of a game. But I have morals, and I will stand for my morals, and family is important to me, and that's one of the morals I stand for.”
We'll see what kind of punishment Patrick Beverley draws from the league for this incident.
