A partron at a Dallas Denny’s told police and the Dallas Morning News that Dallas Mavericks forward Tim Thomas called he and his friends “faggots” during an incident that escalated into chair throwing.
Accounts of the incident are confusing, but do involve punches being thrown and chairs tossed inside the Denny’s at 3 a.m. when Thomas and his group got into an argument with Damien Pettie, 29. Pettie told police and the newspaper that he recognized Thomas and said to him,”what’s up.” That’s when the trouble started.
He said that when he and his friends passed by Thomas’ table and he addressed the player by saying, “What’s up?” Thomas responded that that he didn’t talk to “faggots.” The police report also quoted Pettie as saying Thomas used that term.
Pettie told The News he later passed Thomas’ table again, and that Thomas made another remark derogatory remark about gays. “I asked one of the guys, ‘What the hell did you say?’ ” Pettie said. “As Tim continued to instigate the situation, one of the guys hit me in my mouth. Another one of his friends hit me. They pushed me down onto a table.”
Pettie says he picked up a chair to defend himself. One of the men who hit him in the face then picked up a chair and threw it, he said. Pettie said he caught the chair, but not before it [hit a 65-year-old woman sitting nearby].
Pettie says he is not gay but that some of his friends with him are lesbians.
“It was like a bunch of high school kids. It reminded me of high school. The popular kids picking on lower classmen. That’s how they acted. (Thomas) acted like a big bully kid in high school.
Mavericks’ spokesman Donnie Nelson defended Thomas.
“What I can tell you is that Tim was not involved,” he said. “He’s 30 years old with a wife and kids. When the situation started to escalate, he left the property immediately. Certainly we’re working with authorities and our security folks to get to the bottom of it. But this is something that’s way, way, way overblown.
“Innocent until proven guilty in this country, last I checked.”
Police have not charged anyone in the incident. A local sportcaster was at the restaurant when the incident happened and was to discuss it later today. We will update this story as more details emerge.
Thomas is the second Mavericks player in six weeks to be accused of calling someone a “faggot.” A Los Angeles Clippers fan told Outsports that Gooden called he and his friends “faggots” after a game on Halloween.
on Dec 10th, 2009 at 9:21 AM
Wow.
A heterosexual black man treating gay people the way white people treated him and his ancestors.
What a shock.
on Dec 10th, 2009 at 9:26 AM
What’s shocking? A millionaire basketball player eating at a fancy restaurant like Denny’s!
on Dec 10th, 2009 at 9:32 AM
He is a family man with a wife and children so why is he out at 3am? Tiger Woods probably had a girls-gone-wild party he couldn’t miss. Lets stop pretending these athletes are model citizens and lets stop paying people $10 million a year just for being tall.
on Dec 10th, 2009 at 3:17 PM
The DMN article has witnesses who say Tim Thomas was not the one who said it, if anyone at all said it.
Donnie Nelson’s response is douche like though
on Dec 10th, 2009 at 6:08 PM
Ummm Bill…I am an no way defending what Tim Thomas said but to defend that incident to the way blacks were treated in slavery is so ridiculously stupid that it shouldn’t even warrant a discussion. Don’t even try to compare the two. I didn’t read anything about a lynching here.
on Dec 10th, 2009 at 6:30 PM
Good job Tim, I don’t like FAGGOTS either and I don’t like them pushing their FAGGOT agenda using the media and sit-coms to get everybody to think it’s ok or natural, they are so far from “natural” or “normal” as you can get.
on Dec 11th, 2009 at 8:44 AM
No way you can conflate this with racism.
on Dec 11th, 2009 at 6:40 PM
Mdterp – I don’t know if Bill intended to compare the two in magnitude, or instead, solely in character.
Comparing the incidents in magnitude would be crazy, as you correctly point out. But comparing them merely in character is not so far off. Both homophobes and white supremacists think it’s OK to treat certain people as lesser beings – to harm them simply because they belong to a particular group.
Think of it like chemistry. The sulfuric acid solution in the second beaker may be more dilute than that in the first beaker – but both are still sulfuric acid, and you don’t want either of them let loose onto your hands.
on Dec 11th, 2009 at 7:18 PM
Its important to note that the witness to defend Thomas (conveniently a sports reporter, but we’ll ignore any sort of agenda in that regard for now) never said Thomas did not say it, he merely said he did not hear Thomas say it. Big difference. I doubt he was listening to every single word coming from Thomas and his crew.
(I wrote about this topic on my blog, which I keep plugging. You can get to it just by clicking my name)