S. Samuel
The Toronto Raptors have reportedly reached out to Maybach Music Group's Wale after a heated face-off took place earlier in the week between the Washington, DC native and team broadcaster Matt Devlin.
According to a team representative, they would like Wale to share on-air time with Devlin to show there are no hard feelings.
But now, a rep for the Raptors tells TMZ … Matt was NOT trying to diss the rapper, but his comments were “meant to be making fun of himself for not knowing who Wale is, especially a Grammy-nominated artist with more than 2 million Twitter followers.” The rep says, “It’s a shtick that Matt and our analyst do consistently to poke fun at the fact neither is pop culture savvy.” The Raptors say Matt ” feels badly that Wale may have felt he was making fun of him.” The team adds, “We have reached out to Wale’s management group to see if we can turn this into a positive. We’d like to have him join Matt on the broadcast when we return to Washington at the end of March.” (TMZ)
Buzz behind the incident heated up the Internet yesterday (February 20) morning.
The Washington Wizards hosted the Toronto Raptors Tuesday where D.C. native, and rapper, Wale started some drama with Rudy Gay, and Raptors play-by-play announcer, Matt Devlin. It started when Wale was reportedly talking trash to Raptors forward, Rudy Gay, from his court side seat at the Verizon Center. Gay responded by motioning for Wale to call him (seen in video below) which prompted Devlin to talk about Wale – calling him a “local rapper”, making fun of his name, and saying “He’s not Drake, that’s for sure”. Wale didn’t take it so well. The rapper not only tweeted “shut your mouth” to the announcer, but approached him at their broadcast table. (Bossip)
Following the near-physical altercation, Wale defended his actions.
“I was just introducing myself, that’s all,” Wale told me of his uninvited visit to the booth. “Nah, I wasn’t angry. I was like, you’re not from here, you don’t know. You don’t know.” The tape, and the fans sitting in the suite behind the booth, tell a different story. As you can see […] Wale didn’t seem too happy. The fans in the suite with front row seats to the incident (who did not want their names on record) told me that Wale was yelling “I heard what you said. That’s not cool.” I caught up with Devlin after the game, and he said any “yelling” was a product of the loud arena, and that any beef was Twitter’s fault. “You know what, we were making fun of ourselves. Making fun, because we’re not hip,” he told me. “Obviously people on Twitter and social media, it kind of took on a life of its own. So he came up, we started talking and there was nothing to it.” (Yahoo News)
Wale also went onto Twitter to explain why he should not be painted as the bad guy.
“On the Internet when u defend urself ur criticized for being less of a man. There’s NO honor in defending yourself,or your name.,” he tweeted following Tuesday’s game.
“Somebody call u out your name . And you confront them . YOU wrong . So who u cheerin for the people who take insults in stride? Since when” (Wale’s Twitter)
