Bree vs Charleroi
This weekend we played Charleroi. Charleroi is the New York Yankees of Belgian Basketball, their payroll almost triples and sometimes quadruples teams in this league. There were 6,000 fans in the arena and from Bree it is a 2-hour bus ride. This game was the battle for first place and we controlled the game from start to finish. The home fans were upset at the way the game was refereed, even though the calls were even. We forced them into taking 27 three-pointers, only hitting 12 but the big difference was in rebounds, we out-rebounded them 42 to 19. We only won by 8 points with the final score 82-74. The most disturbing part of the game happened after the game because for some strange reason they allow fans to run onto the floor as soon as the buzzer sounds for autographs. There was a fan who was so upset about how the game was being officiated and he confronted a referee and slapped him. Yes that’s right a fan slapped the ref at half court. Where were the ushers? Where was security? After the man slapped the referee he stood over him barking at him like a junkyard dog. Then his friend pushed him away. Where was the police? Nowhere to be found and then the announcer asked for a doctor. A DOCTOR, not the police or security but a doctor, for a slap. I understand that’s assault but it was a slap and the ref who was slapped rolled around on the ground like a soccer player acting as if he was shot. Our assistant coach preceded to hold the ref’s hand and the other referees are holding his legs in the air waiting on the doctor. After about 2 mins the ref gets off the floor recovers himself and walks to the locker room and the perpetrator is still on the court near the basket. The police are still nowhere to be found. The aftermath of the entire event that took place is this: the team is fined 1,500 euros($2340 dollars) and the perpetrator who has yet to be arrested and charged with assault gets banned from Charleroi homes games for the rest of the season which will be around 6 regular season games and a maximum of 7 playoff games but he can go to any other arena or game in the league. Before you get the wrong idea about Belgian basketball or its fans, this incident is about as rare as Ron Artest and Stephan Jackson going into the bleachers at the Palace in Detroit a few years ago. Belgium has the best and most under control fans in all of Europe and 99.9% of the time they show class and respect for the game and the players. Now if this were Serbia, Turkey, Poland, Cyprus, Croatia, and Greece this would not be at all strange. This incident would be called mild and would be laughed about. To further show how great and calm Belgian fans are is that after the games here there is a huge bar area in the lobby of the gym were opposing fans, front office personnel, coaches and players stand and talk sometimes hours after the game is over so this is a rare and albeit strange incident that happened and has no place in a sporting event.