It was pretty adorable when a little kid ran onto the court of an NBA game last week to hug New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony. The spontaneous moment was widely ooh'd and ahh'd over online.
It also cost two people their jobs.
The court-storming fan was tiny, cute and harmless. He just wanted a hug. But what if he'd been an adult with more sinister motives?
That's the thinking of officials at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, where the incident occurred last Monday night.
An usher was fired and a New Orleans police officer will no longer be hired to work Pelicans home games, Smoothie King Center general manager Alan Freeman told NOLA.com.
The hug might have been celebrated online, but Freeman told NOLA.com it was an embarrassment for those in charge of running game night operations.
Freeman said the usher and officer were out of position when the kid made his move --"so essentially what happened there is that you get two people who were not doing their responsibilities and that led to a black eye for us as the building operator. So what we have done since then is first of all, we obviously replaced those two people who failed to do their jobs -- the usher and the police officer."
Freeman also said the venue's entire corps of ushers was put through additional training sessions after the Monday night hug. As part of this additional training, Freeman said, ushers were shown video of former tennis star Monica Seles being stabbed in the back during a match in 1993.
So, the next time you think about giving someone a hug, consider the potential unintended consequences. There are jobs on the line here, people.
(责任编辑：休閑)
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