Meriweather On Irving's Outburst At Fan: 'We're Human Too'
BOSTON (CBS) -- Kyrie Irving wasn't feeling much affection in the city of brotherly love last week, and it cost the Celtics guard a decent chunk of change.
A fan asked Irving "Where's LeBron?" as he made his way off of the court at halftime against the 76ers, and Irving fired back with a rather unflattering phrase. The league hit him with a $25,000 fine for the incident, which has kind of soured his first week with the Celtics.
Former Patriots safety Brandon Meriweather joined 98.5 The Sports Hub's Toucher & Rich for his weekly chat on Wednesday, and said he used to shout back at fans during his playing days. It's not very uncommon for it to happen, and with all that has surrounded Irving since his departure from Cleveland, Meriweather was expecting some sort of outburst with all the heckling.
"We're human," he said. "You have to understand, we're human too. Everyone gets rattled at some point.
"I'm sure he's been hearing ["Where's LeBron?"] since he left. It's not like he's averaging 40 and 10, so everywhere he goes they're going to ask about LeBron, or every interview they're going to ask about LeBron," explained Meriweather. "That was a matter of time. I kind of expected that to happen."
Things nearly got ugly between a player and fans in Oakland over the weekend, as an angry Raiders fan provoked offensive tackle Donald Penn by throwing a bottle at his car as he left the stadium. Penn got out of his car to confront the fan, who seemed a little too eager to fight a professional football player.
Meriweather says he always had people around him to handle situations like that, and would never have to get involved himself.
"I keep people around me. If I was leaving the game, I'd have my cousin with me. If anything like that happened, they'd handle that for me. I wouldn't have to do nothing or say nothing," he said. "I'd leave and what they do is what they have to do. That has nothing to do with Brandon."
Meriweather also touched on Marshawn Lycnh defending a player on the opposing team, and quickly discussed Tom Brady's trash talk in this week's 5 Questions segment. Listen to the full podcast above.