Oklahoma City Thunder's Nenad Krstic apologizes for involvement in summer brawl

Thunder center Nenad Krstic previously apologized in a court of law, on national television, in newspapers and even tried to apologize in person.

On Monday afternoon, he apologized again for his role in a melee while playing for the Serbia national team last month.

Krstic was arrested and held overnight following an altercation against the host Greece team at the Acropolis tournament in Athens. After standing clear of the fight for more than 20 seconds, Krstic eventually came to the defense of a teammate.

During his interview session at Thunder Media Day inside the downtown arena, Krstic was asked to share his side of “the incident.”

“What incident?” Nenad said, cracking a smile and drawing laughter from reporters.

“I had a lot of questions about this summer, but I’m going to repeat it again. It was just a bad, bad, bad incident,” Krstic said. “I was just trying to protect my teammate. Everybody who’s played sports, it happens. That’s part of the game, I guess. I’m not saying what I did is a good thing. It’s a very bad thing. It’s not going to happen again, definitely. First, I apologized in Greek court and Greek national TV, then Serbia national television. I just want to get done with it and try to focus more on the season.”

Standing in front of the stands along the baseline, Krstic picked up a chair and threw it toward Greece’s Sofoklis Schortsanitis, who was pursuing him. The chair instead hit Yannis Bouroussis, who had not played for Greece because of a hand injury, and left him with a bloody wound on the side of his head.

As punishment, Krstic was suspended for Serbia’s first three games of the FIBA World Championship, where Serbia placed fourth.

“Like I said, this is not a good thing, especially for the kids,” Krstic said. “I apologize to everybody and just (want to) move on. I even apologized to that guy (Bouroussis). I didn’t mean to hit that guy. I tried to apologize to him in the hotel after the game. He didn’t want to accept. I apologized on national TV. I apologized after that in newspapers, so I'm going to apologize again.

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