Derik Queen’s brief trip away from the Pelicans bench during Monday night’s blowout loss to the Warriors sparked plenty of reaction online, but New Orleans coach Jamahl Mosley said the explanation was straightforward: Queen was dealing with neck discomfort and went to get treatment.
The video started circulating late Monday after New Orleans’ 138-87 loss in Golden State and kept drawing attention into Tuesday and Wednesday. In the fourth quarter, Queen stepped away from the bench and then came back a few minutes later. On video, it looked like he simply wandered around the court.
Mosley addressed it Wednesday before the Pelicans played the Brooklyn Nets at Smoothie King Center.
“We’ve seen it and we’ve all looked at it,” Mosley said about the video. “The thing about that was Derik had been talking about his neck prior to the game.
In that moment he had gone to walk back to go get his neck treated on because he was going to lay down and didn’t want to lay down on the bench. That’s a tricky arena to find the locker room.”
A Golden State Warriors official also explained why the scene looked unusual at Chase Center. Unlike most NBA arenas, where the visitors’ locker room sits close to the bench, Chase Center has the visitors’ bench set diagonally from the visitors’ locker room.
That leaves two main routes for a player to get back there: walk the baseline and turn right to go the length of the court, or go behind the Pelicans’ bench, scorer’s table and Warriors’ bench and turn left at that baseline. During a timeout, a player could also cut diagonally across the floor.
Queen took the baseline route, walking in front of the courtside seats on his way to the locker room. On the way back, he used the path behind the courtside seats, which made the whole thing stand out even more while the game was still going on.
When he returned, Queen sat in a seat along the baseline near the Pelicans’ bench. Mosley said that was fine because the bench was full.
“When our bench is full, that’s allowed,” Mosley said. “All arenas are different.
But they have our bench and they have some fan seats and sometimes the owner seats and there’s more room there. And there’s no room on the bench.
You’re in an uncomfortable position and sometimes you land on that baseline side.
Mosley said the issue was really about how it looked.
“The optics aren’t what we want them to look like. Again, going back to get treatment on his neck to lay down in the back locker room.
The route was not the one we wanted him to take. We understand that look.
That’s something we expressed to him and he understands what that looks like as well.”
The awkward part, as it played out, was the combination of the route Queen took and the timing. A player moving alone along the baseline during a fourth quarter in a 51-point loss was always going to draw attention, even if the reason was as simple as treatment for his neck.
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