The New Zealand national team performed a haka dance before they and Team USA faced off in the FIBA World Cup on Tuesday. The video of the dance and the reaction of the Team USA players to the dance went viral, with many finding the performance both cool and humorous.
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But someone who had no interest in laughing about the situation was Oklahoma City Thunder center and New Zealand-native Steven Adams.
Adams fired back at Golden State Warriors guard Andre Iguodala for making a joke about the dance.
Iguodala on Twitter did not respect New Zealand’s Haka.
— Sportando (@Sportando) September 3, 2014
Steven Adams had something to tell him pic.twitter.com/EKZOMY3cWJ
Adams later deleted his tweet and has not made other comments about the situation.
Iguodala likely meant no harm with his tweet, but it’s understandable why Adams would want to protect his culture when he felt it was being mocked.
This back-and-forth just goes to show that while American culture might not think the haka is anything more than an interesting dance, it actually means a lot to those performing it and New Zealanders.
Iguodala didn’t offer an apology for his initial tweet, instead sending the following out to his half-million twitter following:
I see I gotta go back to tweetin in code...
— andre (@andre) September 3, 2014
The first of the Warriors and Thunder’s four 2014-15 regular season matchups comes No. 23 in Oklahoma City.