Wake Forest beat Duke today, in a big blow for Wake Forest’s NIT chances. The fans, as was predicted, stormed the court. A few of them made contact with Duke big man and potential NBA lottery pick Kyle Filipowski. Filipowski was hurt during the collision.
It was immediately clear something had happened. A few Duke players, managers, and staff formed a bubble around the limping Filipowski while Duke head coach Jon Scheyer began hollering into the sea of souls. But it wasn’t until after the game that we got the alternate angles, those blessed alternate angles, the secondary camera work which once made Zapruder famous and now serves to give us clarity on how exactly college basketball stars get injured as they interact with the spontaneous jubilation of a hostile crowd.
Here’s the best one we’ve seen so far:
It’s probably important to talk about what actually happened. With the court-storming discourse, there’s a lot of talk about what might have happened. We do know, though, what did happen, and what did happen was this:
- There was contact between the man carrying the jacket (we’ll call him Jacket Guy) and Filipowski.
- A second fan (we’ll call him Hand Guy) reached across his body and touched Filipowski’s back with his hand as Filipowski stumbled.
- After the game, Scheyer told reporters Filipowski suffered a sprained ankle during the incident.
- After the game, Filipowski told WFMY News that he was told there are videos of players (himself?) getting punched in the back, and that he felt the incident was intentional on the part of the fan or fans.
- Filipowski is 20 years old. The fans involved are assumedly around the same age. We treat 20-year-olds as adults in a lot of ways but not all ways.
- Jacket Guy was running very fast.
- There are things we don’t know about the context of the collision between Jacket Guy and Filipowski.
Is this last piece important? I think so. In the video, it looks like Filipowski pushes Jacket Guy at the same moment Jacket Guy trips over Filipowski’s leg (this is presumably what caused the ankle sprain). Jacket Guy is also turning his head towards Filipowski, though, and he raises that left arm? Was Jacket Guy chirping Kyle Filipowski? What was said? Why was he raising that arm? What was he holding?
Important things I’d like to know:
- At what point did Jacket Guy see Filipowski?
- At what point did Filipowski see Jacket Guy?
- What happened in the moments before this video starts? Was there other contact we missed? When Filipowski mentioned punches to the back, was he referring to Hand Guy? Or was there other stuff that preceded this?
- How badly sprained is Filipowski’s ankle?
- How drunk and/or high was Jacket Guy?
- What was Wake Forest’s plan here? As the university?
- What the hell was Hand Guy doing?
There’s some stuff we ask athletes to deal with. Like hecklers. There are other things, though, we don’t ask athletes to deal with. And there are things we don’t ask fans to deal with! Should fans be allowed to bullrush athletes without consequence? No. Should athletes be allowed to push fans unprovoked? No. What’s hard on this one is that even with that alternate angle, we can’t really tell who initiated contact. This is grayer than the Caitlin Clark incident at Ohio State, where it was clear Clark was in the wrong. You could believe Filipowski was pissed and shoved a fan who got too close. You could believe Jacket Guy was getting in Filipowski’s face and Filipowski shoved him to get the guy off of him. It’s hard to know what happened.
Are court-stormings dangerous? A little. Every few years, there’s a real injury from one. That’s a low rate (fans storm courts all the time), but it’s easy to call it low when you’re not the one spraining your ankle (or breaking two bones in your leg).
A few ways to view this that feel reasonable:
Court-Storming Is an Occupational Hazard
This is kind of extreme, but you could argue that if someone doesn’t want to get hurt in a court-storming, they shouldn’t put themselves in the vicinity of a stormed court. Fans, reporters, refs, players…everyone made a choice on some level to be there. If you participate college basketball, a stormed court is always a possibility. Filipowski could have gone to the G-League. He could have gone pro after last year. Instead, he chose to play college basketball for Duke, one of the prime targets for stormed courts.
Court-Storming Should Be Rarer
This is how the SEC* is approaching the issue, although it’s unclear if this is their desired effect. Over the last few years, the SEC has been levying increasing fines for stormed fields and stormed courts. The idea might be that this is bad and should be penalized, but it might also be that by putting a (high) price on a stormed court, the SEC is making sure schools really want it when they fail to stop their students’ storm. Not all stormed courts are created equal. Sometimes, you really want the fans to storm a court, and if you’re the school, you’ll pay for it. Other times, it’s not worth six figures to a university.
(If any new rules are going to come, they should differ conference by conference. Let schools decide on this stuff with their peers. No need for a one-size-fits-all solution.)
There’s Gotta Be a Way to Keep Court-Storming Cool While Delaying It Just Enough to Make It Even Safer
There’s been some criticism of Wake Forest for letting fans get so far onto the court so quickly. In some respects, this is fair. There was no visible attempt made to slow the storm or get Duke’s players off the court. On the other hand: Aren’t the best court storms the most vigorous? If we’re going to get rid of court-stormings, I would prefer we get rid of the lamest among them. Today’s in Winston-Salem, for better or worse (worse, I guess, since we’re writing this), was not lame or lackadaisical.
There was also some foreshadowing on the broadcast which might be pertinent here. During a late dead ball (I think it was when Boopie Miller was going to the free throw line with a little over a minute left and the lead at three), you could hear someone at the arena discussing the storm on a hot mic. We didn’t hear specifics. Maybe they were saying, “That kid’s gonna go for Filipowski’s ankle.” But you could hear something along the lines of, “If we win, they’re going to storm the court,” and then it sounded to me like they were discussing the security protocol. Maybe I was inferring too much.
Either way, it seems like a good solution here would be for schools to stack up security two rows deep on the baseline when a storm might happen, then tell the other team they have five seconds to find shelter. You want to slow a court-storm just enough to get the other team off the court. You don’t want to slow it so much that it becomes lame.
**
Stormed courts are one of the most fun things about college basketball. Unrestrained celebration now and then is something that would probably do us all some good. But man, fans need to keep a better eye out for opposing players. Phone in the pocket. Head on a swivel. Be in the moment. Look out for Kyle Filipowski, who might be throwing ‘bows.
*Update: Other conferences fine schools too, but all at a much lower cost than the SEC price.
