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Rapper Wale Got Mad At A Raptors Announcer, Then Confronted Him During The Game In Last Night’s Weirdest Moment

Rapper Wale is from Washington, D.C., so he attended the Raptors’ 96-88 win over the Wizards at the Verizon Center last night. As well-known people often do, Wale had excellent seats, ones close enough to the court for him to banter with the players. Players like the Raptors’ Rudy Gay, for example, who noted the two are friends after the game last night.

But why’d Gay feel the need to say that? Well, when he and Wale were busting each other’s chops, Raptors play-by-play man Matt Devlin narrated the action between the two of them… only he used words like “heckling,” and generally made clear in no uncertain terms that he was unfamiliar with Wale. And then he just had to add, “He’s not Drake, that’s for sure.” Here’s the whole thing:

Now, we imagine the Drake thing was just Devlin getting in a light-hearted crack of his own, being that Drake is from Toronto and Devlin is a Raptors announcer and all, but… well, word apparently got out pretty quickly about this to Wale, and he was something less than amused:

Wale, for his part, downplayed the whole thing to the Raptors’ DeMar DeRozan, but also said this:

On the Internet when u defend urself ur criticized for being less of a man. There’s NO honor in defending yourself,or your name.

— Wale Folarin(@Wale) February 20, 2013

Somebody call u out your name . And you confront them . YOU wrong . So who u cheerin for the people who take insults in stride?Since when

— Wale Folarin(@Wale) February 20, 2013

OK readers, you ready for SportsGrid Lesson Time (TM)? Good. Here are SportsGrid’s Lessons (TM) from the Wale-Matt Devlin confrontation:

1) If you do not know who a person is and are informed he is actually a well-known person, probably best to stop there.

2) If a person does not know who you are but has clearly come upon this ignorance innocently and plainly means no harm by it and is just trying to joke around, it’s best to laugh it off.

Can we all do that, you think? Yes? Good. Enjoy your day.

UPDATE: Sarah Kogod at D.C. Sports Bog got some additional insights:

“I was just introducing myself, that’s all,” Wale told me of his uninvited visit to the booth. “Nah, I wasn’t angry. I was like, you’re not from here, you don’t know. You don’t know.”

The tape, and the fans sitting in the suite behind the booth, tell a different story. As you can see from the second video below [ed. note: i.e. the second video above in this post], Wale didn’t seem too happy. The fans in the suite with front row seats to the incident (who did not want their names on record) told me that Wale was yelling “I heard what you said. That’s not cool.”

The SportsGrid Lesson (TM) of “laugh it off and move on with your life” still stands.

[Larry Brown Sports]