Watch: Ref allegedly sparks massive brawl in basketball game
Critics of Amateur Athletic Union basketball say the AAU game is everything that’s wrong with youth sports — a den of corruption and thuggery, a place where childhood is warped beyond recognition by shoe companies and that sweet, sweet dream of the NBA.
The AAU, for its part, maintains the same fiction the NCAA does, that it is a paragon of amateurism and love of the game.
Well, if that’s the case, then what in the name of the basketball gods just happened in Atlanta?
https://twitter.com/djones8301/status/1015968085856129025
So a player punched a ref, which is unfortunate but sadly not unusual. Plenty of young boys of poor upbringing and moral character can’t restrain their temper; it’s just part of youth sports.
But then the referee slugged the kid right back.
And once that happened, all hell broke loose.
At that point, a fight between the players and the refs was inevitable, but eventually people from another game going on in the same gym stepped into the fray, and once the players on the team in the white jerseys gained the upper hand, they started getting vicious toward bystanders.
In particular, one player looked to be about to attack the woman who was recording the incident; you can hear her yell, “Oh my God” before the video cuts out, a chilling moment right out of a found-footage horror movie.
Here’s the same fight from the opposite sideline angle.
https://twitter.com/djones8301/status/1015973584735539201
In this clip, the blame is mainly put on the referee, including the microphone on the camera picking up someone yelling, “Is he on drugs or what?”
The comments on the second tweet speak volumes, as people point out that while basketbrawls are as old as the game itself, outright jumping a ref gang-style (the guy without the shirt getting beat up in the second clip is a referee) is a level of thuggery not previously attained.
As yet, no police involvement has been mentioned, but it seems likely that once the assailants are identified, criminal charges will be filed.
And the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is AAU basketball will continue to produce moment after moment of people of low moral standing losing their minds over some perceived slight.
Meanwhile, the coach of one of the teams, Chicago’s RAW Athletics, had his own version of events in which he puts the blame on the referee.
https://twitter.com/rawathletics0/status/1015984902783819777
All the same, the correct response to a referee throwing a punch is not the entire team trying to beat that ref to death with their bare hands.
This whole thing is just a mess.
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