We tend not to think of basketball as a particularly dangerous spectator sport. It’s not like baseball, where foul balls get sprayed into the stands all of the time. At NBA games, most fans can relax and take their eye off of the ball for a moment if the need arises. I say “most” fans because basketball comes with the unique component of courtside fans. Sometimes, play will spill out onto those seats, and those fans can find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having players dive, stumble or fall right on top of them. It’s just rare that those fans also happen to be Academy Award winners.
Of course, Madison Square Garden is a unique environment. Celebrities are plentiful in New York, so celebrities are courtside every time the New York Knicks take the court. It therefore shouldn’t have been a surprise to see Anne Hathaway sitting behind the scorer’s table on Wednesday as the Knicks took on the Chicago Bulls. What she likely didn’t expect, though, was to very nearly get crashed into by a member of the team she was rooting for.
But that’s what happened in the first quarter, as Knicks forward OG Anunoby tipped a pass out of bounds. Unwilling to give up on the play, he chased the ball over to the scorer’s table and jumped on top of it, nearly falling forward into the lap of Hathaway, sitting right behind it.
The good news? Anunoby managed to stop himself in time, and no collision between player and fan occurred.
The bad news? Anunoby did knock a container with unknown contents — french fries, perhaps? — off of the table in slowing himself down, so Hathaway had a bit of cleaning up to do after the fact. All things considered, though, that’s a small price to pay to avoid a crash with the 6-foot-7, 240-pound Anunoby.