Duncan Robinson Talks About His Role in the Charlotte-Detroit Fight

The NBA had a huge fight a few weeks ago. The Charlotte Hornets and Detroit Pistons got into it, causing a bench-clearing fight that had some people having flashbacks to the Malace at the Palace. Obviously, this fight didn’t involve any fans and was finished before it could get too out of control, but it still created a moment of “oh my god, is this happening again?”

As a result of the fight, multiple players from both teams faced multi-game suspensions. Duncan Robinson, who was on the court during the fight but quickly walked away to keep himself out of it, has received some criticism for not backing up his teammates in the brawl. Robinson addressed these critics on a recent Old Man and the Three Podcast episode.

“It looked and I could see how there could be a narrative outwardly of like, oh, I like left my guy hanging or I didn’t care about Stew or whatever. Like, and that was actually the only aspect of it that like I wanted to make sure Stew and I were cool, not like publicly, but like and I do think Stew and my teammates know that I like ride for them. Obviously, it’s going to be a little different than how Stew rides for his teammates. Like I’m also goin to be authentically me, right? And in that moment, I got captured. It looked bad, it did to be honest. Like it didn’t look like I was down for the cause. You know, I learned my lesson. Next I’m going to grab someone, at least make it, you know, kind of get in the middle.”

To be fair to Robinson, he wouldn’t have helped much in a fight anyway. Robinson isn’t a fighter, and getting involved would have just added to the suspension list and potentially gotten Robinson hurt. So even while the optics weren’t great, Robinson was smart to not get in the middle of that fight.