Chris Canty Shares Worst Duke-Wake Forest Court Storming Take Yet on 'Get Up'
By Liam McKeone
We're on Day 3 of the court storming news cycle after Kyle Filipowski was trampled by a sea of Wake Forest students and got hurt following Duke's loss on Saturday. It has served as the latest referendum on the safety issues that accompany the tradition and many possible solutions were thrown around, like Jay Bilas suggesting everyone who stormed the court be arrested. There was also plenty of blame given out, like Jay Bilas suggesting the media is at fault because we keep talking about it and showing it. So maybe just Bilas had takes while everyone else went back and forth about how court storming can easily lead to injuries but is also part of the fabric of college sports.
I honestly can't believe it took this long but we finally have a truly terrible take on the situation. Chris Canty appeared on Get Up this morning and suggested Filipowski himself is at fault because he didn't show any hustle getting off the court while the mass of drunken humanity that was the Wake Forest fans surged towards him.
ESPN's Chris Canty has his own take on court storming that put some of the responsibility on Kyle Filipowski himself for getting injured.
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 27, 2024
"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
Yep. That's right. Instead of blaming the fan who nailed Filipowski first as he was running past screaming at him, or the whole concept of court storming, Canty blames the player who got hurt. A classic instance of suggesting the pedestrian in the crosswalk should have simply moved out of the way of the oncoming car who hit them.
Could Filipowski gotten on his horse and made it out of the way? Maybe. There was probably just enough time that, if he sprinted, he could've gotten clear. But it's one thing to observe that. It's quite another to suggest that he is at fault for failing to do so. It is, in fact, entirely logical that a player on the losing team doesn't anticipate getting run over by a thousand students and his gut instinct isn't to break into a dead sprint to get to the locker room after a loss.
In no way should it be Filipowski's responsibility to avoid injury here. It's Wake Forest's responsibility to ensure their fans do not hurt opposing student-athletes, as it always has been and always will be.
Hard to imagine a worse take than this, but the day is young and the discourse doesn't seem primed to fade quite yet.