Editor's note: An abridged version of this article appears in the December 2015 edition of GQ magazine.

The Atlanta Hawks' plane touched down in Newark at about 1 A.M. on April 8. Spirits were high. Hours earlier the team had blown out the Suns in Atlanta. Two weeks before that they had clinched the top seed in the NBA's Eastern Conference. New York is a city Thabo Sefolosha, the Hawks' cerebral 31-year-old Swiss–South African shooting guard, has always loved. One of the league's best perimeter defenders, Sefolosha is an indispensable role player—the guy who guards LeBron or Kobe with the game on the line.

After the Hawks checked in at the Ritz in downtown Manhattan, Sefolosha and his teammate Pero Antic headed for 1 Oak, a popular Chelsea nightclub. They arrived around 2:30 A.M. As it happened, another NBA player—the Bucks' Chris Copeland—was also at the club, though Sefolosha didn't know it. At about 4 A.M., Copeland got into an argument on the street outside and was stabbed by another man. The police shut the club down and hundreds of people, including Sefolosha and Antic, ﬂooded West 17th Street.

Two TMZ cell-phone videos show what happened next. At least ﬁve officers violently force Sefolosha, in a black hoodie, to the ground. One officer brandishes a retractable baton over Sefolosha's prone body, then whips it downward. Offscreen, a woman's voice protests, "They didn't do anything!" Sefolosha tells the officers, with astonishing calm, "Relax, man." Eventually he is led away, limping and in handcuffs. His injuries would end his season.

The cops later claimed that Sefolosha hadn't cooperated when they told him to leave the scene and became so aggressive that he "charged" at them. They arrested him for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and obstruction of governmental administration. This fall, Sefolosha rejected multiple plea deals, daring the city to dismiss his case or go to trial.

On October 9, after deliberating for just 45 minutes, a jury exonerated him totally. Two weeks later, he announced that he was suing the New York Police Department for $50 million.

About 4:15 A.M., they turned the lights on at the club and told us it's time to go. Something happened, we're not exactly sure what. The police are outside closing the place down—directing people, telling them to move.

An officer came over to me and said, "Get the hell out!" I said, "Did I do something wrong? You can talk to me in a nicer way." I didn't quite understand why he had to come at us so hard when there were so many other people around. We moved, but he kept telling us to get the hell out. I told him we were listening to him: "You are the police, but you don't have to act like you're the toughest guy on earth." He said, "With or without a badge, I can fuck you up." Like, whatever. We're not about to find out. I'm the last guy who gets physical with anybody, especially the police. At the same time, I felt singled out for no reason. He was much shorter than me. [Sefolosha is six feet seven.] I said, "You're a midget, and you're mad." I voiced my opinion, but I kept moving.

By then I was in the street, around many other people. I asked him where he wanted me to go. He said, "Keep moving until I tell you to stop." I joined the rest of the people, next to a pizza place, and that's when five or six or seven other officers surrounded us. It felt like I had done something wrong. Probably they heard what I said and decided, "We're going to make sure this guy knows that we're the police and that basically we rule." They told me I had to leave the scene. They were almost provoking me, challenging me. I didn't want to react to them.