Miami Heat captain Udonis Haslem is known to be one of the toughest competitors on the court, and whether it's another player or a heckling fan on the sidelines who says or does something inappropriate, he makes sure he confronts him.
That was exactly the case on Tuesday night during his team's match against the Detroit Pistons as the veteran forward went face-to-face with a fan sitting courtside and told him not to be disrespectful. Haslem had to be restrained by his teammates and Juwan Howard before the man got ejected from the game eventually.
After the game, the 36-year-old Florida product talked about the incident and revealed what he said to the fan. He also explained what triggered him to approach the man.
“You know how fans get some times? They get real disrespectful. It wasn't nothing racial or sexiest. It was a lot of disrespect.”
“You can cheer for the other team, but I'm not going to tolerate the disrespect for other things.”
“I don't know. It'd been a long night I guess.”
This is certainly not the first time a player has confronted a heckling fan, but it's also a good thing that it didn't end up violently like what also happened at the Palace of Auburn Hills 12 years ago in the infamous “Malice in the Palace.”
At this early stage of the season, incident s involving fans as the aggressor have been a cause for concern already. Some time ago, a 76ers fan, a doctor in this case, flipped off on Russell Westbrook and was eventually kicked out of the arena.