ESPN colleague calls Jay Bilas’ remarks on arresting court stormers ‘the dumbest thing’ ever

Posted by Matt February 28, 2024 5 Min Read

richardjefferson

As college basketball has seen numerous court invasions this past month, it has become a serious issue to attend by the sport officials. As the solution is still unclear, many experts have shared different opinions on how to address the situations. Last week, analyst Jay Bilas suggested that these fans should be arrested for the action. 

His ESPN colleague Richard Jefferson wasted no time, and the following day he started his NBA Today segment by ripping him apart for his comments. “That’s gotta be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire …,” he said on Monday. “Did he say detain 10,000 people? Did he say give 10,000 people citations?”

Jefferson is a former 18-year career NBA player who was also a standout college star in Arizona. Even though he admitted that he has had the court invaded many times as an athlete and “it sucks,” he believes Bilas was too excessive.

“But this is about college basketball, this is about college football. To say something, and I love Jay Bilas – a legend in this game – that is asinine to suggest that,” he added. “Because for me, when you look at this, yeah, get your players off the floor. … But this is a part of college sports, it always has been, for what? Forty years? Fifty years?

Jefferson compared this situation in other American sports. “You know what? Even in football. You’re gonna stop all the people from running on the field when Alabama loses to Florida A&M? No, you’re not going to stop it. Figured out a way to protect your players. Again, we’re talking about one situation, two situations over the course of how many court stormings?” he asked.

“We get it. But let’s not get old and get the ‘Get off my lawn, get a citation, let’s arrest them all.’ Do we know what we’re talking about when we say these things?” Richard assured on ESPN.

According to the former basketball star, there are certain moments where he understands fans want to invade the court. He mentioned that if attendees pay their tuition and support their team in an underdog situation against a historic rival, then “Look, you deserve to storm the court.”

Bilas further explained his assessment on court invasions after Jefferson had blasted him on NBA Today

After his first remarks over the weekend, Jay kept at it on Monday and further explained why something has to be done about court storming. However, the analyst already knows that nothing is going to happen because no one is willing to get their hands dirty to truly solve the issue.

“The truth is nothing’s going to change now,” he expressed on First Take. “We’re going to talk about it. It’s going to go away, and nothing’s going to change. And if they wanted to stop it, they could stop it tomorrow. The administrations will tell you the security experts tell them that it’s not a good idea to try stop the court-storming, because that could cause more problems than it would solve.”

Bilas went all the way to suggest that even the media is complicit in these court invasions, as in the past it was policy of the networks to stop broadcasting if they happened.

“Years ago, when fans would run out on the field or the court during a game, it was network policy not to show that because we didn’t want to encourage it. So what does that say about the way we in the media use these images now? We can’t deny that we encourage it or at least tacitly approve of it,” Jay insisted.