This headline is as stupid as it sounds.
A University of Kentucky basketball player apologized Monday for laughing this weekend during a conference game in which his team, the Kentucky Wildcats, was beaten badly by the University of Florida.
Towards the end of Saturday’s game, which Florida won 88-66, the crowd serenaded UK’s Malik Monk with a rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Monk turned 19 that day.
The UK shooting guard found the impromptu singing humorous, his team’s impending defeat notwithstanding, and it prompted a big smile from him as he was sitting on the bench.
The cameras caught the moment during their broadcast of the game, showing the brief moment out of context, which was unfortunate for Monk.
This is the age of the Internet. People enjoy being angry for no apparent reason, and they’ll jump at the chance to dogpile a guy. Social media users and sports blogs went nuts over the optics of Monk smiling as his team lost to Florida.
“Kentucky’s Monk laughs during blowout loss to Florida,” read an MSN headline.
One decidedly silly CBS Sports headline read, “While Kentucky was getting hammered, Malik Monk was laughing it up.”
That particular story concluded:
While it’s unfair to judge a young man (he turned 19 on Saturday) off a short video, the reaction in itself does raise some concerns. Whether Florida fans were singing him happy birthday at the time or not, it’s not a great look to be enjoying yourself in such a deflating loss. And despite how you might imagine a player of Monk’s caliber might react in such a defeat, it doesn’t appear he’ll be losing any sleep over it.
Good God almighty, is this real life? I checked the CBS Sports report for a “satire” tag, and I came up empty handed.
On Monday, Monk apologized for laughing during the game. He explained that he was actually reacting to the crowd singing “Happy Birthday.”
“It caught me off-guard, them doing that,” he told a gaggle of reporters.
“We played bad. Winning is on my mind from the jump. If anybody took that wrong, I’m sorry for that. It was clever from them, the fans, to just do that. It was funny to me, but I shouldn’t have laughed at that moment because I knew the camera was on me,” he added.
Congratulations, Internet.
You pressured an apology from the birthday boy. You really saved the day on this one. You haven’t come through in a clutch moment like this since the time you forced a tearful apology from a space scientist because he wore a “problematic” shirt.
Humanity owes you a debt of gratitude, angry Internet person.
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This article has been updated.
