Maybe lay off the hot sauce, B-dubs-dubs.
Buffalo Wild Wings earned widespread backlash after offering to host “on us” the arrested Spurs fan who interrupted Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday to run on the court and take a selfie with Victor Wembanyama and Mitchell Robinson in the fourth quarter of the Knicks’ 105-95 win.
“Internet, help us find the banned fan. he can watch the rest of the finals at B-Dubs on us,” the company posted Thursday afternoon.
Whichever marketing executive — or perhaps maybe the social media manager who went rogue — came up with this idea must not have cared or anticipated the backlash.
“Holy L. Why would we reward this guy?” one X user wrote.
Another mentioned how military members only receive a 10-percent discount: “if you’re a military member, you get 10% off your meal at select locations and select food item. If you committed a literal crime, you get 100% off your meal at Buffalo Wild Wing. The math isn’t mathing. Shameful.”
A third person penned: “Yeah let’s reward a loser interrupting game 1 of the nba finals.”
While Buffalo Wild Wings may be trying to turn the individual into a marketing ploy, the NBA is not taking such a comical approach.
The fan had been arrested and will be banned for life from all NBA arenas, and a second individual also received a lifetime sanction, an NBA spokesperson told the Associated Press on Thursday.
The Knicks led 92-86 with 6:32 remaining when the fan ran toward Wembanyama and Mitchell, coming streaking from the other end of the court to take a photo while yelling, “Wemby.”
He turned for a selfie, with Wembanyama smiling and Robinson appearing confused, before the first Frost Bank Center security staffer began to whisk him away.
New footage showed that he didn’t even get the selfie he wanted, with the 7-foot-4 Wembanyama too tall for the shot.
“I’ve never been in that situation. I didn’t know how to act. It really surprised me, almost as much as that time [when] a bat crossed the court,” Wembanyama said while referring a 2024 incident with the bat.
