50 Cent fears he’ll receive the E-40 treatment if he attends the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors’ next playoff game.
The Bay Area rap legend made headlines this past weekend when he was thrown out of the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento while watching his beloved Warriors take on the Kings in the opening game of their first-round playoff series.
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Footage from inside the arena showed E-40 barking at and almost getting into a scuffle with the Kings’ security before he was escorted out of the building by a member of the Warriors security team, with injured Warriors forward Andre Iguodala tailing behind him.
The In a Major Way rapper continued to angrily shout expletives in the direction of security as he made his way off the court and down the tunnel.
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50 Cent was also in attendance at the Golden 1 Center that night as the Kings — with whom he struck a deal last year to make his Sire Spirits brand the team’s exclusive spirits partner — upset the Warriors to take a 1-0 lead in the series.
But in an Instagram post on Tuesday (April 18), the Power mogul revealed he won’t be in the building for game three at San Francisco’s Chase Center on Thursday night (April 20) as he’s concerned that he, too, may face the same treatment as E-40.
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Whether that’s because he expects the Warriors’ security to target him in retaliation or simply because he’d celebrate the Kings’ buckets a little too loudly is unclear.
“I was thinking about jumping on this jet to the Bay Area for game 3 but the KINGS kicked E40 out, They might want to kick 50 out the Chase center. LOL,” he wrote while sharing a video montage of the series so far, which the Kings lead 2-0.
Accounts of why E-40 was kicked out of the Golden 1 Center vary. According to one eyewitness, it all started when a white woman asked the “Tell Me When to Go” rapper to sit down.
An unnamed fan told The Mercury News that the woman had asked E-40 to “repeatedly” sit down, and he ultimately snapped and began exchanging words with her.
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E-40 issued a statement about the incident the following day, in which he claimed that he had been heckled by a fan during the game, and when he responded to them in an “assertive but polite manner,” he was unfairly accosted by the Kings’ security.
The 55-year-old went on to describe the ordeal as “a reminder that racial bias remains prevalent.”
“On Saturday night, I was subjected to disrespectful heckling over the course of the Warriors-Kings game in Sacramento,” he wrote. “During the fourth quarter, I finally turned around and addressed one heckler in an assertive, but polite manner. Yet, shortly thereafter, Kings’ security approached me, assumed that I instigated the encounter and proceeded to kick me out of the arena.
“Unfortunately, it was yet another reminder that — despite my success and accolades as a musician and entrepreneur — racial bias remains prevalent. Security saw a disagreement between a Black man and a white woman and immediately assumed that I was at fault.”
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He continued: “I’ve attended countless NBA games throughout my lifetime and have always prided myself in my professionalism, so this experience has been jarring. I was absolutely humiliated by the Kings’ security team and I’m calling on the franchise to investigate the appalling conduct that transpired.
“I’m truly grateful for my fans and supporters who have reached out to express their concern and disappointment regarding these disheartening circumstances and I hope those involved are held accountable for their behavior.”
