The waning moments of Thursday night’s game between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Indiana Pacers saw Patrick Beverley get into it with a fan. Beverley threw a ball into the stands twice over his apparent frustration with what the fan had to say in the aftermath of Indiana’s series-clinching 120-98 win, which led to Charles Barkley calling for him to get suspended on Inside the NBA later in the evening.
There was one question that hung over this: What, exactly, did the fan say to get this reaction out of Beverley? According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, things started to get tense when the fan screamed “Cancun…Cancun on 3.”
Sources: The exchange between Patrick Beverley and one of the fans in Indianapolis escalated when the Bucks were breaking huddle Thursday night, and the fan yelled, “Cancún…Cancún on 3.”
NBA is looking into Beverley’s exchange with fans in game and media postgame, per source.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) May 3, 2024
Obviously, a longtime Inside the NBA bit is to say that teams that lose in the playoffs are heading to Cancun, with Chuck and the gang occasionally going “1-2-3 Cancun.” It goes a bit farther back than that — you can read the full story right here — but “1-2-3 Cancun” gets thrown around a lot nowadays, so even though Beverley probably wasn’t in the best mood, it sure doesn’t seem like this alone should have set him off like that.
As Charania noted, next up is an investigation from the NBA into this incident and an incident in the locker room postgame. It could’ve been worse, he could’ve said “1-2-3, Galveston.”