A few friends and I have a weekly ritual of playing basketball down in south Austin. We chose the location because over the last few months we've never seen anyone else there. This week, after a few games of two-on-two, a group of gentleman started shooting at the other end of the court. They wanted to play 5-on-5, full court, but needed one more player. My friends were about finished up playing and wanted to leave, so I decided to stick around and play.

After brief introductions with my new team, we started to play at a rather frantic pace. Midway through our game, I noticed another young gentleman walking, with basketball in hand, towards the court. When we were at one end of the court, he would shoot baskets at the other end while he waited to play next.

Towards the end of the game, the opposing team had a fast-break, and the young man was unaware of the bulls running towards him. He noticed a second too late, and one of the players rushing down the court bumped into him as the young man tried to scramble off the court. The player that bumped him became irate. He yelled at the young man to "get the fuck out of the fucking way when you see us coming down the fucking court". I felt like it wasn't that big of a deal and a quick apology would have diffused the situation, but the young man didn't choose the path of least resistance. He started to yell back. I decided to interfere and try and calm everyone down because at this point everyone on the court was surrounding the young man. Before I knew it, someone had thrown a punch and knocked him down and blood was pouring out from under his eye. I was shocked. People started to get their keys and water jugs and walk to their cars as I helped the young man up. I advised him to wash his eye off so it wouldn't get infected. He replied, "fuck you, I don't get infections" and then mumbled something about how he knew he could take a punch.

It's been a few days since all this happened and I'm still amazed at how quickly something as trivial as a pick-up basketball game can turn into a violent situation. What the hell is going on?