The Golden State Warriors came up with an impressive 118-92 road win over the New Orleans Pelicans Sunday, bouncing back from the 119-100 loss they suffered in Game 3 Friday. But much of the talk around the game was about something far removed from the court. During the game, Ruston, Louisiana-based stand-up comedian Andrew Polk tweeted that he hoped Warriors’ forward Draymond Green got shot in the face afterwards:
#ratio pic.twitter.com/YXeQgyBJbX
— Kellie Rowe (@kellierowe) May 6, 2018
Polk later deleted that and even deactivated his account, but that’s just a terrible tweet on so many levels. For one thing, this game was in New Orleans rather than Oakland, so that’s presumably an insult to Polk’s own state, not the place where Green plays. (It would be a terrible take even if it was a shot at Oakland, but “Hey! You have to play against a team in a city with high gun violence!” is a really dumb insult.) For another thing, the “37%” makes no sense.
Yes, gun crime rose in New Orleans in 2017 to a rate higher per capita than even Chicago’s, but that was still only a rate of 149 people per 100,000 wounded or killed by gunfire, or .15 percent. Similar stats don’t appear immediately available for Oakland, but it had 72 overall homicides in 2017 compared to 158 in New Orleans despite a larger population of around 420,000 versus around 391,000, so even if you presume that Polk thought Sunday’s game was in Oakland and was trying to take a shot at that city, he was way off. At any rate, this led to quite the response from Green:
Draymond Green on receiving a death threat on Twitter: "I just pray that he gets the help that he needs" pic.twitter.com/xMpZrnNME5
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) May 6, 2018
“If he feels the need to do something like that about basketball, then I feel bad for him. It’s kind of sad that someone would take this that serious. When you’re talking, at the end of the day, what’s a game. Making death threats, talking about life. I just pray that he gets the help that he needs.”
After that, Polk briefly reactivated his account to apologize, then deactivated it again:
Look, it’s good that Polk apologized and said he doesn’t actually want to hurt anyone over a game. But this should show that A. death threats over sports aren’t appropriate or funny, B. attempts to reference cities’ gun violence rates probably aren’t funny, and C. some comedians should be a little more careful with what they’re cracking jokes about. Maybe Polk should focus more on material about the similarly-named James and Leonidas? “54-40, or the bishop will never fight?”
