The court storming that resulted in Duke center Kyle Filipowski suffering a minor knee injury following Wake Forest’s win over the Blue Devils on Saturday has elicited no shortage of takes.
But on Tuesday, Chris Canty managed to put a new spin on the three-day-old topic by blaming Filipowski for not having more awareness to avoid a potential injury.
“Let’s also not pretend like the players don’t have to have some more awareness in those situations as well,” Canty said on ESPN’s Get Up. “What we saw from Kyle Filipowski, he looks like he’s going on a walk through the quad on campus, where you see that there are fans that are storming the court. He has to have more awareness of the situation and have urgency about getting the hell off the court. Now I think that they have to do a better job of creating a plan and having that in place. And I get that we don’t want to put the onus on the visiting team. But that has to happen.”
If you think Canty’s take sounds crazy, you’re not alone. Even the mild-mannered Mike Greenberg had to interrupt and clarify whether the former NFL defensive end was really blaming a player for fans running into him as he was attempting to leave the court.
“I’m confused by where you’re putting the responsibility,” Greenberg said.
“I’m putting the responsibility on everybody involved,” Canty said. “I’m putting the responsibility on the coaches, I’m putting the responsibility on the universities, the stadium people, the security, the arena people. I’m putting the responsibility on everybody to try to keep the players and the coaches of the visiting team as safe as they possibly can be.
“As a player, you’ve got to have awareness. And I know we always talk about with in-game situations. But you also have to have awareness of the environments that you’re in. And with that situation over the weekend, I don’t think Kyle Filipowski showed that level of awareness.”
ESPN's Chris Canty has his own take on court storming that put some of the responsibility on Kyle Filipowski himself for getting injured.
"He's acting like he's going on a walk through the quad on campus… he has to have more awareness of the situation and have urgency about… pic.twitter.com/NTZJRKy0qd
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 27, 2024
That’s certainly a take.
While there may be some scenarios where players could exhibit more awareness as fans storm the court, this wasn’t one of them. As Greenberg pointed out, Filipowski was involved in the game’s final play and had minimal time to leave the court before it was flooded with Demon Deacons fans.
Give Canty this much — when it comes to a topic in which everybody else seems to be saying different versions of the same thing, he managed to give a take that was different. Perhaps the actual solution to court storming in college basketball is somewhere between arresting the fans and placing the responsibility on the players who might get injured in the process.
