Atrás
You’ve probably seen the video making the rounds on social media by now.
It started late Monday night after the New Orleans Pelicans’ 138-87 loss to the Golden State Warriors and spilled over into Tuesday and Wednesday.
In the fourth quarter of the game, Pelicans’ forward Derik Queen left the team bench. He returned to the bench a few minutes later. When watching the video, it appears that Queen just took a walk around the court.
The video led to many questions, especially since it came in the midst of a game that ended up being the worst regular season loss in franchise history.
So here are some answers to some of the questions after talking to Pelicans’ head coach Jamahl Mosley and a member of the Golden State Warriors’ staff.
Why did Queen leave the bench?
Mosley, speaking to the media during pre-game of Wednesday’s game against the Brooklyn Nets at Smoothie King Center, gave this explanation.
“We’ve seen it and we’ve all looked at it,” Mosley said about the video. “The thing about that was Derik had been talking about his neck prior to the game. In that moment he had gone to walk back to go get his neck treated on because he was going to lay down and didn’t want to lay down on the bench. That’s a tricky arena to find the locker room.”
What makes Chase Center different from most NBA arenas?
I spoke with a Golden State Warriors official Wednesday afternoon about this.
In most arenas, including the Smoothie King Center, the exit to the locker room is right by the bench. Chase Center is unique in that the visitors’ bench is diagonal from the visitors’ locker room. There are 2 ideal ways to get from the visitors' bench to the visitors' locker room.
1. You can walk the baseline route like Queen did and turn right and walk the length of court.
2. You can walk behind the Pelicans’ bench, scorer’s table and Warriors’ bench and turn left at that baseline.
(If it was during a timeout, a player could walk diagonally across the court.)
Queen’s decision to walk IN FRONT of the courtside seats along the baseline and sideline (on way to locker) instead of behind the courtside seats (which he did on way back to bench) made it more noticeable. Especially since it all took place while the game was going on.
When Queen returned to the bench, he sat in a seat along the baseline near the Pelicans’ bench. Why?
“When our bench is full, that’s allowed,” Mosley said. “All arenas are different. But they have our bench and they have some fan seats and sometimes the owner seats and there’s more room there. And there’s no room on the bench. You’re in an uncomfortable position and sometimes you land on that baseline side.
What were Mosley’s thought on it all?
“The optics aren’t what we want them to look like. Again, going back to get treatment on his neck to lay down in the back locker room. The route was not the one we wanted him to take. We understand that look. That’s something we expressed to him and he understands what that looks like as well.”
What made the optics bad?
Here are my two cents on that one. The right thing would have been for Queen to get a member of the teams’ security or medical staff to walk with him to the locker room. Without anyone accompanying him, it appeared he was just wandering around. The fact that it came in the fourth quarter of a 51-point blowout made the optics even worse.