Doug Gottlieb had quite the interesting weekend, which he detailed during The Doug Gottlieb Show Monday.
“Somebody threw a punch at me this weekend,” Gottlieb shared. “My AAU team, I probably should have taken this weekend off. I have a daughter riding out to Temecula, which is like an hour and a half from where I live. I had another daughter going to a homecoming dance. But my little guy is really kind of improving in game and getting it and I just wanted to give him a chance to play some ball.
“Because kids don’t get the chance to just go play ball at the park anymore, plus he’s a little too little to go play with adults. So we play, and we’re playing up a little bit age-wise, but I’ve got kids who are injured, kids who are sick, kids who are out.”
Gottlieb then said he had been trying to teach his son — who he described as “little” — to play better defense and to be more aggressive. The player his son was guarding was ” a foot taller than him”, and posted his son up to hit a turn around jumper.
“So in an effort to encourage ‘Hey, just cause a guy scored doesn’t mean you didn’t do what I asked you to do’, I said ‘Don’t worry about it’,” Gottlieb said. “I might have said ‘Don’t effing worry about it’ — cause that’s just how I speak — ‘Don’t worry about it. He’s never going to score in the post, that’s not what he does, ok? You’re fine. That’s how I want you to play’, talking to him as he comes up the court.”
The Fox Sports Radio host then said the parent of the player who scored on his son approached him after the game.
“A dad walks over with the other team’s point guard, who’s his age but a foot taller than him and he said ‘Hey man, you talking ish’ and the guy goes and takes a swing at me. I duck my head and his fist kind of grazes the top of my head. I tried to do the whole launch, pile drive into him, like shoulder into the waist, and then there’s people grabbing me and I’m like ‘Dude, what?’.
“So here’s the question: You’re in my position. The guy is over in the corner of the gym, he left, never to return. Do you call the cops? Here’s the conflict of it. If you just let it go, you’re allowing that behavior. Right? I don’t want to be a whiner to the cops, but it’s assault.”
After some discussion, Gottlieb’s producers agreed they wouldn’t call the cops to spare the scene getting out of hand for the children involved. He then discussed how he views the potential for physical altercations as a media member, noting a fight he had while playing basketball when he worked at CBS.
“I’d play pickup ball at a 24-hour (gym), and a guy started a fight with me,” Gottlieb said. “I told the guy — we were kind of in a pile, the guy took a swing at me and I just grabbed the guy’s area and squeezed — and he was like ‘What are you doing?’. And I was like ‘Here’s the deal, bro. If I punch you, I can break my hand. I kinda like my hand. You can sue me, and I’ve actually saved some money. And three, it’s a really bad look’.
“So yeah, I’m gonna fight a little dirty, but I’m not caught on camera throwing punches on TikTok, back then Vine. In our position, you can’t really get in a real fight and actually punch someone. It’s a terrible look.”
