Thursday night during the Oklahoma City Thunder-Cleveland Cavaliers game at Quicken Loans Arena, LeBron James chased a loose ball into the crowd and barreled into a woman who ultimately had to be taken away on a stretcher.

When the dust settled, it was revealed that the woman was Ellie Harvey, the wife of golfer Jason Day, who was sitting on her right.

Despite how bad it looked, Ellie was transported to the hospital where she was cleared of any major injuries. James himself even tweeted out his concern and hope that the Days would come back to another game soon.

You might think “well that’s that” and we can move on now but clearly you haven’t been to The Land of Hot Takes that we live in. Because nothing exists in a vacuum anymore. There is always someone at fault and there is always someone who did something wrong.

According to Mike Golic, that person is Jason Day. The soon-to-be National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Famer took some time out of his show this morning to chastise the golfer for not doing more to protect his wife from LeBron’s incoming impact.

Golic: “You know that your wife is there, you know LeBron is coming and you can figure it out. What’s gonna happen.”

Greenberg: “What did you want him to do, tackle LeBron?”

Golic: “Make an effort to protect your wife! Cause I’m gonna tell you right now, when she sees the footage of that, she’s gonna ask the same thing.”

For argument’s sake, let’s follow Golic down the rabbit hole. Let’s say that Day should have jumped in front of his wife or shielded her in some fashion from the 6-foot-8 and 250 pound man running full-speed towards them. Looking at the play in real-time, Day has all of about one second from the time it looks like the ball is coming towards them to the time James runs into them to make a decision. Considering he wasn’t exactly pre-planning for that scenario, it’s impossible to think anyone could have done anything to stop LeBron’s momentum.

But that’s not even the point. The point is what it says about us that Mike & Mike had to dedicate a segment to discussing the manhood of a spectator, that ESPN made sure to promote it on their site and that it’s well within the guidelines of what’s acceptable because, hey, it’s better to have a take than to say nothing at all.

To be clear, Jason Day isn’t the only person apparently at fault here. It’s Ellie’s fault as well, at least according to a since-deleted tweet by Black Sports Online:

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Again, it’s easy to look at the clip in slow motion and make sweeping generalizations about what people were thinking or should have done. It’s another thing to look at the clip in real-time and realize literally no one is at fault over this freak accident that is bound to occur when spectators sit court-side at an NBA game.

We all like to complain about the “Embrace Debate” movement that’s spawned First Take and its ilk, but there’s also a reason those programs are so highly-rated. It’s the same reason the content aggregators love “man on the tweet”-type posts that tell a story through reactions, regardless of whether or not the people making those reactions deserve an audience. Doesn’t matter if the point is true, it only matters that someone said it.

There’s an old adage that “shit happens.” For some reason, we’ve convinced ourselves that it’s not enough. We have to figure out who caused the shit to happen, who could have prevented shit from happening, what we would have done if we were there when shit happened and what the correct thing to do is when shit happens next time.

Until then, it’ll just have to be up for debate.

[ESPN]

About Sean Keeley

Along with writing for Awful Announcing and The Comeback, Sean is the Editorial Strategy Director for Comeback Media. Previously, he created the Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician and wrote 'How To Grow An Orange: The Right Way to Brainwash Your Child Into Rooting for Syracuse.' He has also written non-Syracuse-related things for SB Nation, Curbed, and other outlets. He currently lives in Seattle where he is complaining about bagels. Send tips/comments/complaints to sean@thecomeback.com.