Lunar New Year is next Monday, and the Sacramento Kings are celebrating the holiday during tonight’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks with player introductions in Mandarin and a pregame celebration. Originally, their celebration was also supposed to include these Year of the Monkey shirts given away to fans:


But when Kings superstar DeMarcus Cousins—who is sitting out the game with a sprained ankle— arrived at the arena, he didn’t like the idea of giving away “Year of the Monkey” t-shirts on the first night of Black History Month, which every team in the NBA is celebrating tonight with warm-up shirts. Cousins successfully lobbied Kings staffers to halt (or at least postpone) the promotion, according to Bucks TV analyst Marques Johnson’s Facebook page:

I walk into the building and DeMarcus Cousins calls me over to an animated discussion he’s having with Kings operations people. He ask me, “Olskool, what you think about this T Shirt? Told him a little insensitive on 1st day of Black History Month”. They pulled the shirts...


Here are the shirts being removed:

Photo via Getty


E-mail: kevin.draper@deadspin.com | PGP key + fingerprint | DM: @kevinmdraper