Russians.
They interfered with our election.
They hacked our Instagram accounts.
And now they’re throwing chairs at Kristaps Porzingis.
That’s the story on the NBA streets, at least. The cell phone video, taken outside of a club on a cobblestone street in Porzingis’ hometown of Liepaja, Latvia, shows the Mavericks basketball star with a bloodied forehead and a torn shirt, promising his alleged attackers, “I’ll send your ass back to Russia.”
So it’s a history book dispute. Let’s go with that for a minute.
The Soviet occupation of the Baltic state of Latvia began in 1940. Thousands of Latvians were whisked away in the middle of the night and deported on cattle cars to Siberia. More deportations and executions followed during the Joseph Stalin regime, when Latvians were among the nationalities targeted for ethnic cleansing.
The Russian government maintained that the Soviet Union’s occupation of Latvia was a “liberation” from Nazi Germany. Though multiple countries and international courts of human rights would declare it illegal, the Soviet occupation of Latvia lasted 48 years.
So back to Saturday night . . .
The TMZ paparazzi first reported the incident. Mavericks officials are said to be investigating.
It didn’t take long, however, for the story and its accompanying video to hit the social media super-highway.
For Knicks fans and the New York media outlets, this quickly became Twitter heaven. A TV station called the cell phone clip “disturbing video.”
Some immediately linked the incident with the March story of a woman who claims that Porzingis raped her in February, 2018, a claim that the player’s lawyer says is unfounded and an extortion attempt.
But let’s tap the Lada brakes there, comrade. From all appearances, it was a bar fight and a shouting match. No guns. More significantly, no arrests.
A bar fight, same as on Saturday night, anywhere.
At 7-foot-3 and known to possess a fat American bank account, Porzingis makes a large and unmistakable target. So what exactly is the 23-year-old’s crime here?
Trouble seems to have no trouble finding star athletes. If the NFL started suspending every player who went to a night club after a Sunday game, the Cowboys would be playing six-man football.
Poor judgment on Porzingis’ part, just being at a club?
I’d argue that he used better judgment than, say, jetting off to Cabo on the weekend before a big playoff game.
Some went as far to suggest in print that the incident indicates a “pattern of questionable behavior” by Porzingis and, therefore, the Mavericks should think twice before awarding him a new max contract in July.
Ah, the media moral police. They’ve already “convicted” Porzingis twice.
When last we checked, evidence in the rape/extortion case was still being investigated by the FBI and New York district attorney’s office. Mavericks, Inc., has always maintained that it agrees with Porzingis’ lawyer that the woman’s claim is fraudulent.
Those are just claims, however – Porzingis’ side of the story versus the word of the alleged victim.
There is video, on the other hand, of part of last weekend’s altercation. And it’s incongruous for any responsible journalist to look at the clip and conclude that Porzingis physically assaulted a female.
On the video, Porzingis himself appears to have just been assaulted, and his companions are trying to restrain him. A woman in a white coat steps in the player’s way, and Porzingis shoves her aside and moves toward the man/men he is arguing with.
The woman doesn’t fall. She doesn’t react as if she was hurt. In fact, she follows Kristaps and joins a small circle that shields Porzingis and helps defuse the argument. A policeman on the scene is shown telling the NBA star to “please, calm down.”
As with Mark Cuban and the Mavericks, the league will investigate. The NBA has an international brand to protect.
Lacking an arrest record, however, or an interior video that shows the beginning of the incident, it’s going to be impossible to tell who started what.
Porzingis, granted, needs to be smarter about how to react when he’s at a place where testosterone and alcohol – and maybe decades of bitter politics — are being mixed.
But this, by all we’ve seen so far, was a bar fight, not a Baltic score-settling.
The only thing “disturbing” about the video is the media storm that has followed.
(Photo from TMZ video)