A couple of nights ago, Washington Wizards announcer Glenn Consor had a poor choice of words to address Kevin Porter Jr’s game-winner. He thought the Houston Rockets young guard, whose father was imprisoned for manslaughter and later shot killed in a bar, was the son of former NBA player Kevin Porter.
“You’ve got to give credit. Kevin Porter Jr., like his dad, pulled that trigger right at the right time,” Consor said during the broadcast. And even though it was unintentional, plenty of NBA figures came out in support of Porter, including LeBron James:
“Oh he thought this was cool huh!!?? Nah we ain’t going for this! Sorry but this ain’t going to fly! How insensitive can you be to say something like this. Beat it man! I pray for you but there’s no place in our beautiful game for you!” the Lakers star tweeted.
LeBron Doubles Down On His Comments
Consor shared a public apology over his comments and his confusion, claiming that he had also reached out to Porter trying to explain what happened. Even so, LeBron still thinks his words were inexcusable and doubled down on his take against him:
(Transcript via Fadeaway World)
“I stand by my tweet and I stand by everything I said. Let’s just say he thought that was the case. We get scouting reports on players and I know you guys in the media y’all get memos and stuff from players before the game. I’m not a play-by-play person but I believe they do their due diligence as well and they get their reports on teams they about to play as well as their own team. I was actually watching the game live last night when I heard it.
So if I’m a play-by-play announcer, and I’m covering my local team in his case he’s covering the Wizards. So he remembers the Kevin Porter that used to play for the Bullets. The first thing I would have done, I would have said ‘oh, Kevin Porter Jr. is coming into town, let me see if that’s his son.’ I would have done that due diligence way before and I think everybody on this call would have done the same thing.”
At the end of the day, Consor should’ve known better instead of just assuming Porter was who he thought he was. Hopefully, the young Rockets star won’t take this personally and we can all move on from this unfortunate incident sooner rather than later.