Mavericks Ban Heckler Accused Of Shouting "Fuck Your Mother" At Patrick Beverley

The Mavericks fan whose verbal exchange with Clippers guard Patrick Beverley last month ended with Beverley getting ejected for throwing the ball into the stands has been banned from the arena for the rest of this season.

Beverley was ejected for chucking the game ball at Don Knobler, a self-described Mavericks superfan who was sitting courtside under Dallas’s basket in the fourth quarter of a December 3 home game. Afterward, Beverley accused Knobler of shouting “fuck your mother” at him; Knobler’s account acknowledged the verbal taunts, but left off the profanity. According to Beverley, he’d spoken to arena security and the referees about Knobler’s behavior, and when they refused to act he took matters into his own hands:

“I just, I can accept the ‘Fuck you, Beverley,’ the ‘Fuck you, Pat,’ but out of the lines of my mother, anybody who knows me, man, knows I’m a family-first guy, and there’s some things that are unacceptable. After I told the refs, I told security, the Dallas security, told both of them and again, he said it again. So if no one is going to control fans, what are we supposed to do as players?”

Tim MacMahon says the team’s investigation ultimately supported Beverley’s version of events, and that other Dallas fans have “complained that Knobler had inappropriately heckled opposing players on other occasions.” Knobler has been attending Mavericks home games in signature flamboyant attire since at least 1997, the year before the Mavericks drafted Dirk Nowitzki. Missing the rest of Luka Doncic’s rookie season will be enough of a blow, but there’s a very good chance Knobler’s rudeness will also cost him the last few games of Nowitzki’s long career. These aren’t things you should need to weigh when considering whether or not it’s a good idea to yell “fuck your mother” at a perfect stranger, but here we are.