While Bradley Beal was dropping 20 points off the bench in the Phoenix Suns‘ 119-109 win against the Washington Wizards on Saturday, a Suns fan spent the majority of their night heckling him.
Beal couldn’t hear what was being said, but his wife, Kamiah Adams-Beal, and their kids were within earshot.
It got so bad that Adams-Beal sent the kids away in the third quarter to get away from the consistent barrage of insults. But in the fourth quarter, when their children had returned, the fan allegedly shouted, “Trade this bum ass b***h Beal for Jimmy Butler!”
At that point, Adams-Beal exchanged words with the fan and security intervened.
“I almost left the huddle with 30 seconds left in the fourth,” Bradley Beal said. “Apparently some guy, just heckling, kind of being an asshole. And my wife was pretty calm about it, but then, when my son’s right there, she’s not going for none of that.”
Beal said his wife and kids were okay after the fact, but on Monday, Kamiah Adams-Beal took to social media to make her thoughts on the incident clear.
“I usually ignore nonsense, as I like to leave the circus to the clowns, but let’s clear this up,” she wrote on Twitter. “Being a fan is fine — “boo, you suck” comes with sports. But disrespect is another thing.”
“During the game, a “Suns fan” spent the entire night heckling my husband,” she continued. “It got so bad I sent my kids away in the third quarter after multiple people asked if we were ok and asked if I wanted them to say something. The breaking point came in the fourth when my kids were back and the ‘fan’ yelled, ‘Trade this bum ass b***h Beal for Jimmy Butler!’ My 6-year-old, with tears in his eyes, asked why someone would say that about his dad. So at that point, security had to intervene, or I was going to.”
Bradley Beal addresses fan incident
Before Phoenix’s game against the LA Clippers on Monday, Bradley Beal addressed the incident as well.
“All I see is my wife and my son crying on the front row and my wife turned around and yelling at somebody,” Beal said. “That’s never good. Family comes before any of this basketball s**t. So I just wanted to make sure that she was good, and once the security was taking care of it, I’m like, ‘We’re good.’”
This is unfortunately not the first incident where Bradley Beal has had a negative interaction with unruly NBA fans. In Washington in 2023, there was a postgame incident in Orlando that landed him under police investigation. According to a police report obtained by ESPN, the fan told Beal that he “made me lost $1,300, you f**k.”
Beal, according to the report, doubled back to the fan and his friend, swatting his right hand toward him and knocking the friend’s hat off his head while making contact with the left side of his head.
Whether on the road or at home, Bradley Beal isn’t surprised by these types of incidents anymore.
“I’ve had it in D.C. before, so it’s not like a new thing,” Beal explained. “Fans are fans. They have their right to voice their opinion and do it and feel how they wanna feel. But we also believe there’s a right and wrong way of doing it and being respectful about it.”
Still, despite being a long-tenured veteran in this league, Beal said he digested Saturday’s incident the same way he would’ve 10 years ago.
“I don’t overreact to stuff, fans are gonna act the way they do, and my support system is gonna act the way they do. So I’m out here to play basketball, that’s it.”
Beal said he isn’t on social media much, so he wasn’t aware of what his wife wound up posting online, joking, “She probably said some wild s**t, I’m sure.” But he also mentioned that his family are his biggest support system, and after Beal’s 13 years in the NBA, they know what to post and what not to post in order to be respectful of the team.
“Athletes are human,” Kamiah Adams-Beal wrote. “They have families. Be a fan, but keep it respectful. ‘Cause if we keep it real, most talking crazy behind a keyboard, or *not in someone’s face* would be the first to ask for a picture outside. Hope this clears things up.”
