Huge brawl stops travel basketball game Sunday

For the second time in a week, a large brawl interrupted a youth basketball game in the Atlanta area at the Lakepoint Sports Facility.

During a girls' game last week, a 13-year-old player was fouled hard and the fracas began when a fan came out of the stands. The player suffered a concussion during the melee.

According to Yahoo Sports, a boys’ game in Atlanta ended with an all-out brawl Sunday between referees and players during a game matching R.A.W. Athletics and the Houston Raptors.

A pair of Tweets from a Houston-based recruiting writer Doug Jones of rcssports show a player from Chicago-based R.A.W., wearing white, appear to knock down a ref and start to push on him. The referee reacts and the incident begins. The video shows the referee being knocked down and swung on by the players several times before another official flies in and knocks a player into the bench.

It's not clear how the fight began — or who started it.

The incident began in the fourth quarter with R.A.W. trailing.

The coach from R.A.W., Howard Martin, put a tweet out Sunday, since deleted, saying that the official attacked his player.

"Everyone tried to break it up," the coach tweeted, "then the ref's father (who was working a game on a different court) ran over to our court and rushed our guys....everyone in the gym, the other team and the directors saw everything."

There's no way to corroborate the story and Yahoo was unsuccessful in getting comment from tournament directors, but it appears time to add a new cost to running an AAU tournament: additional security.

Although the event was not sanctioned by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) and was not an AAU event, the president of the organization denounced Sunday’s actions.

This story was originally published July 8, 2018 at 11:09 PM.