It’s all finally coming together for Drake, the rapper and noted front-running fan whose hometown Toronto Raptors are in an Eastern Conference finals dogfight with the Milwaukee Bucks. The Raptors evened the series at two games apiece Tuesday night, and naturally Drake had to ham it up for the cameras, at one point getting up from his courtside seat to give Toronto Coach Nick Nurse a shoulder rub.
Get you a hype man like Drake. 😂#WeTheNorth | #NBAPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/8X7pVo0Wvg
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) May 22, 2019
Bucks Coach Mike Budenholzer wasn’t having it.
“I will say, again, I see it in some timeouts, but I don’t know of any person that’s attending the game that isn’t a participant in the game, a coach — I’m sorry, a player or a coach — that has access to the court,” Budenholzer said on Wednesday. “I don’t know how much he’s on the court. It sounds like you guys are saying it’s more than I realize. There’s certainly no place for fans and, you know, whatever it is exactly that Drake is for the Toronto Raptors to be on the court. There’s boundaries and lines for a reason, and like I said, the league is usually pretty good at being on top of stuff like that.”
In response, Drake posted an Instagram story in which he was shown liking a user’s comment that read: “If you don’t want the opposing team to celebrate and dance, prevent them from scoring, winning, or achieving their objective. Get over it and keep moving.”
Nurse said Wednesday that he hadn’t realized he got a shoulder rub from the rapper “until somebody showed me a picture of it today. I didn’t even feel it. I was so locked into the game.”
Budenholzer wasn’t the only losing patience with Drake’s act. Georgios Dimitropoulos, who used to represent Antetokounmpo, criticized Drake on Twitter, writing that he’d “never seen anything as disrespectful as this before,” before deleting the tweet.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel rounded up social-media reaction to the rapper, under the headline “Milwaukee totally hates Drake, who doesn’t own the Raptors but is somehow allowed to freely roam the court.”
According to the NBA Fan Code of Conduct, ticket-holders are not allowed to display “disruptive behavior” and are forbidden from “attempting to enter the court.” Whether Drake actually is being disruptive here is a matter of dispute, but he certainly is entering the court.
What is not in dispute is the fact that every team/athlete Drake admires eventually falls on its face:
Will Alabama fall victim to the Drake Curse? pic.twitter.com/WiV6tuggEE
— ESPN (@espn) January 3, 2019
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