Early in the fourth quarter of Toronto’s Game 3 road victory over the Warriors, play was held up for a minute while Kyle Lowry appeared to scold either a Warriors fan or multiple Warriors fans or the referees or arena security, or all of the above. Upon review, it appeared that Lowry was pissed because a dickhead Warriors fan in a court-side seat shoved him after Lowry fell into the stands chasing a loose ball.
At the start of the sequence, Raptors big man Serge Ibaka made a tremendous play in transition to swat away a Quinn Cook layup, sending the ball sailing toward the sideline. Lowry, who never met a loose ball he didn’t chase with the reckless abandon of an adolescent Labrador, made a desperate play to keep the ball inbounds, and went sailing into the stands. Lowry appeared to step on the sideline before touching the ball—one way or another, the Warriors retained possession. But keep an eye on the fan in the blue polo shirt in the front row, a seat or two over from where Lowry entered the stands:
It’s not a slap or a punch, but it’s also unmistakably an unnecessary and rude thing to do, and is for sure not the sort of thing NBA fans should be doing when they come into close proximity with players. Lowry was obviously pissed, and appeared to be both yelling at the fan and asking officials to take action. After the game Lowry said the fan’s rude behavior wasn’t limited to the shove:
It’s not too much to ask that fans who pull this kind of crap get hit with some kind of punishment, even though Kyle Lowry provoking official intervention to deal with mild physical contact in an NBA basketball game is a little too on the nose for my tastes.