Phoenix Suns rookie Josh Jackson fouled out of Saturday’s blowout loss to the Clippers with six minutes left, and as he headed to the bench, he appeared to mime shooting a gun at a Clippers fan, before sitting down and mouthing “Fuck you.”
Jackson said the fan had been heckling him throughout the game, and also that when he was making a gun gesture with his hand he wasn’t making a gun gesture with his hand, but rather deciding at the last second not to flip the bird:
“That’s what most people thought I was going but I actually wasn’t making a gun,” Jackson said, adding he has seen the video. “I kind of wanted to put up the middle finger to him but I didn’t do that because I felt like I was really being watched so I kind of halfway did it.”
Regardless, the NBA saw the gesture as significantly “menacing” enough to warrant a $35,000 fine, as the league announced today via another inexplicably blurry release: