Social media was either laughing along with NBA player Victor Wembanyama’s amused response to his security guard knocking down pop star Britney Spears at a hotel in Las Vegas, or “disgusted” by the 19-year-old athlete’s seeming indifference to the incident.
In a video interview shared by San Antonio channel News4SA to Twitter, Wembanyama grins as he says he “woke up to a couple of phone calls,” about Wednesday night’s headline-making run-in.
Comic W. Kamau Bell tweeted, “Victor Wembanyama has been a model citizen his whole life in France. Comes to America and 2 weeks later he’s in TMZ story with Britney Spears. AMERICA! F—K YEAH!” He added a laughing emoji to his quote tweet.
“Is it okay now to beat women in America? Britney Spears got slapped on the face by Victor Wembanyama’s security guard and all he said was how funny that night was? What a shame! I am deeply disgusted!l,” wrote @yankisner from Brazil. “It is his fault when he knows his security guard hit a woman and instead of apologizing to her, he laughs at the situation,” he added.
“He thought that the SITUATION was funny, not the act of slapping a woman, but him learning about the fact that the girl that got taken out by his security turned out to be Britney Spears. Give him some slack as it’s not his native language too,” @CrRomumu said of the French-born athlete.
WOAI-TV Sports Director Don Harris shared his opinion that the world-famous pop star’s publicist was “trying to buy her 15 minutes [of fame.” He added, “Absolutely much ado about nothing… Trust me, the story is as dumb as it sounds.”
Spears issued a statement earlier on Thursday in which she said she expects the athlete to apologize. She explained that her own security team has always shown much more restraint: “I was swarmed by a group of at least 20 fans [on Wednesday]. My security team didn’t hit any of them.”
“That is American icon Britney Spears, you better apologize Wemby,” tweeted Fernando Gallo while another person joked that the headline should have read, “Wemby violently assaulted by Britney Spears.”
@theseeker428 blamed basketball player’s security guard, saying, “It doesn’t seem like Wemby had anything to do with it, so I’m not placing blame on him. I know security has a tough job. But you just can’t be slapping bitches at the drop of a hat. Whether it’s Britney Spears or Jane Doe.””
Read more reactions to the Las Vegas incident below:
