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DeMarcus Cousins is only one of many players that have been victims of racial abuse at the mouths of hecklers in NBA arenas. The Golden State Warriors center openly discussed the subject during an interview with Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports in light of the Russell Westbrook incident that saw not one, but two Utah Jazz fans banned from the arena after evidence of derogatory behavior toward him.
Much like Westbrook, Cousins was also fined for retaliating — something the league has done in order to be consistent with the policy written under the NBA's collective bargaining agreement.
“Oh, I’ve been called n*****,” said Cousins during the latest Posted Up video podcast to be released this week. “And it’s crazy because this has happened to me on a few occasions. I reported it to the league, and, you know, I may have said whatever I said back and I was still punished for it. But obviously it became a bigger issue when it was Russ [Westbrook], and he was still fined for it. I don’t really understand it. We’re the product. We push this league, so I don’t understand. When does our safety, when does it become important?”
When asked of the cities in which he'd heard racial slurs, the new Warriors addition declined to answer. According to Haynes' sources, one of the incidents occurred in Sacramento.
“I don’t really want to [name cities or teams], because I’m not really trying to put a label on an entire fan base,” said Cousins. “There are ignorant individuals in every city. I’ll just put it like that. … [The league] tells you to ignore it, or whatever the case may be, but how many times am I supposed to ignore that. Me coming from where I come from [Mobile, Alabama], they're lucky all they got was a response.”
Some fans have shown to be tremendously entitled to courtside seats when yelling obscenities or racial epithets, knowing they'd be protected by security and the league when doing so. If this was any other case, berating a 6-foot-11, 270-pound behemoth at his work place would be considered an unwise choice, as Cousins points to in his conversation with Haynes.