Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, a shooting guard for the Detroit Pistons, has been fined by the National Basketball Association for $10,000 after kicking the chair of a spectator, according to Marc J. Spears of Yahoo Sports.
The 22-year-old was on his way to the locker room after picking up two technical fouls against the Chicago Bulls on Monday when he kick the chair and scared a young girl who was in the close proximity.
“I apologized to the family and the little girl. I gave her a jersey and signed it and apologized for kicking the chair and scaring her,” he said. “In the heat of the moment, I wasn’t really thinking about it — but before I left the arena, I thought about it so I apologized to her and gave her a (game-worn) jersey and another jersey signed by me.”
On the first technical, Caldwell-Pope bounced the ball off the ground and into the air after being called for traveling. It was unknown if the frustration was because of his actions or because he was not in agreement with the referee. After committing a foul, Caldwell-Pope argued with a referee regarding a collision between himself and Pau Gasol of the Bulls. With 7.6 seconds left in the third quarter, Caldwell-Pope was issued his second technical foul of the game, which forced him to the locker room.
It did not help that the guard had words with coach Stan Van Gundy, who also barked back a little bit.
“I used to go through that with guys a lot more than this. I’m worried about how they play and what kind of people they are,” Van Gundy said. “The guy was really frustrated; if you’re going to say something to a guy in a situation where he’s already frustrated, any of us would do the same thing.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said to him because it wasn’t the time and it wasn’t productive. I couldn’t keep him in the game and should have just let it go.”
The good news is that things have figured themselves out and the duo are on good terms.
“We’re good. We had a talk before we got to Houston,” Caldwell-Pope said. “Everything was in the heat of the moment, but we talked about it and squared it away.”
Meanwhile, the 6-foot-5, 205 pound defensive minded player mentioned that he had off the court issues that were on his mind and he was not fully focused on the game of basketball. The guard will have to clear his head and get ready for a tough matchup against James Harden and the Houston Rockets on Wednesday.
"I had other things on my mind from off the court. There was a lot of stuff going on and I tried to juggle it,” Caldwell-Pope said. “Out of frustration, I kind of exploded, and it wasn’t me. I jumped out of character.
“Just a lot of stuff was going on before the game. I didn’t handle it pretty well and it carried over into the game — something that shouldn’t happen.”
The Pistons, who were down by just three points when Caldwell-Pope was kicked out of the game, ended up losing 111-101 at The Palace. The graduate of the University of Georgia finished with 14 points, five rebounds, two assists, two steals and one three-point jumper across 33 minutes of action.
“It didn’t hit me until I got to the locker room,” Caldwell-Pope said Wednesday. “I felt like I let my teammates down and it was a bad decision to even do that at that time. It was a critical time going into the fourth quarter.”