The AP reports:
Police engaged in a roughly 20-minute standoff Saturday with a knife-wielding man on the floor of Los Angeles’ Staples Center, where the Los Angeles Clippers and Cleveland Cavaliers were set to play later in the day.
Police tackled and apprehended the man after the face-off on the court near the visitors’ bench area.
Some spectators for the 12:30 p.m. game had begun filing into the arena, but were evacuated once the standoff started.
The Press Enterprise blog reports:
During that time, Staples Center was essentially in a lockdown. A few players — as well as the Clippers’ dance team — were on the court when the incident began but were quickly removed. Those in the building’s backstage area confined to wherever they were as the incident began. For most of the players on both teams — save for the later-arriving Cavaliers players, who were unable to get in — that meant being held in their locker rooms, or the section of hallway in front of them.
For a time, players on both teams, as well as various other personnel, crowded around one of the small monitors used by a broadcast crew, watching a live feed of the incident from the court, wondering how the standoff would be resolved.
