To celebrate the Lunar New Year, the Sacramento Kings planned to give away "Year of the Monkey" shirts to fans in attendance at Monday's game against the Milwaukee Bucks. They got as far as placing the shirts on the seats, but then they cancelled the promotion and removed them.
Kings center DeMarcus Cousins was not pleased with the fact the Kings were giving out shirts with a monkey on them on the first day of Black History Month, according to Bucks commentator Marques Johnson. The team acted quickly when Cousins expressed his opinion, per the Sacramento Bee's Jason Jones:
“We all need a lesson in sensitivity,” Kings president Chris Granger said. “In an effort to celebrate Chinese New Year, we had some concerns about the T-shirt giveaway, so we pulled them all before the doors opened. Certainly we don’t want to offend anybody, and we acted as soon as we heard the concern.”
Center DeMarcus Cousins was one of the first people to raise concern with team officials, and soon thereafter, the shirts were collected.
The Kings still went ahead with their other Lunar New Year plans. This included a pregame celebration ...
Part of the pregame Lunar New Year celebration pic.twitter.com/z2lfYYRqXH
— Jason Jones (@mr_jasonjones) February 2, 2016
... and player introductions in Mandarin.
Lunar New Year is next Monday. Sacramento hosts the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday, and then does not have another home game until Feb. 19, so there probably won't be a good time to redo the giveaway.
