Portrait of an Artest as a Hood

By now, you’ve read all about the basketball game that broke out during a brawl at the Palace in Detroit. It’s the number one topic at every water cooler this morning and the leading story on the evening news, not just the sports segment. If peace in the middle east was achieved over the weekend, no one would know about it as we’re all too busy offering opinions on what happened Friday night.

But, as the saying goes, there’s three sides to every story: yours, mine, and what’s caught on videotape. So, let’s go to the tape.Obviously, this is my opinion on what happened but it’s fueled by 4 scenes of video that I saw, not by any preconceived notions of spoiled millionaire athletes or the portrayal of Artest as an out of control anger freak.

Scene 1

Artest fouls Ben Wallace with 45 seconds left in the game. Big Baby Ben didn’t take kindly to the foul or his team being blown out so he shoves Artest in the face trying to provoke a fight. Artest stumbles backward but remains calm. Wallace continues to go after Artest amidst a lot of shoving between players and coaches.

Artest ends up on the scorers table and decides to show he’s calm by lying down. Remember, the most galling thing to a guy trying to provoke a fight is to pretend you’re disinterested. This gets Ben (and subsequently the crowd) even more fired up. Hardly a saintly move by Artest but you can hardly call out someone for not fighting as the reason for the melee that followed.

Scene 2

A beer comes flying in from the stands and hits Artest in the face. Artest immediately gets up and climbs into the stands. Some dork in a black shirt is busy talking trash at the players until he sees Artest coming at him, at which point he says, if you can read lips, “oh shit!” and tries to cover up. According to overhyped guy who backed down quickly,”[Artest] was on top of me, pummeling me,” fan Mike Ryan of Clarkston said. “He asked me, ‘Did you do it?’ I said, ‘No, man. No!'”

Next, you see a guy in a blue jacket or shirt throw a full beer into the face of Ron Artest. Stephen Jackson sees it, then throw a hard right hand that connects, jumps on top of him and keeps throwing haymakers.

Anatomy of the scene? Well, Artest should not have run into the stands. Period. But I do not blame Jackson at all for jumping in there to help his teammate. Teams are family right? Someone just threw a full beer into the face of your brother in a highly volatile situation. You’re going to tell me you don’t swing at him? Please. I know that we can all sit here and call out these NBA players for being criminals and thugs but in the heat of the situation, you’d be doing the same thing. Or perhaps you pee sitting down. I’m not one to condone some macho bullshit about defending your turf or kicking someone’s ass because you’ve
been “disrespected” but if you’re going to tell me you would be in a zen like calm in that situation (remember, you’re also 25 years old), you’re full of it. The guy who got hit by Jackson? Deserved it.

Scene 3

By now, the fight in the stands has been sorted out and Artest heads back to the floor. He is immediately confronted by two hobbits wearing Pistons jerseys. One of them steps up and assumes the fighting position. Listen, if you get on the court where you don’t belong and you assume the stance, you better be prepared to fight. What was Artest going to do with someone in his face? A guy looks like he’s about to throw a punch, you throw one before him. Or do I have this self defense thing all wrong?

As people rush in and everyone tries to knock down the riled up boys from the Shire, O’Neal comes from out of frame and just absolutely destroys one of the guys with a right. Ok, I gotta admit, that punch was probably unecessary. I’m thinking
O’Neal took 2 or 3 steps just to get to the guy. Definitely a roughing the passer penalty.

Scene 4

As O’Neal is being escorted to the locker room, a guy in the stands is gleefully dumping his entire $4 bottle of Mountain Dew onto his head. Then someone else throws a full beverage and a tub of popcorn at him. The only thing I take out of this scene is that there are a lot of cowards out there that will do things in a mob mentality. Knowing that all hell was breaking loose, these geniuses
decide they’d like in on a piece of the action. How can the players be entirely to blame when it’s evident what levels these “fans” will stoop to just because they are drunk or just plain idiotic?

Suspensions and Fines

So, Artest gets the season, Jackson gets 30 games, and O’Neal gets 25. Fine. An unprecedented event merits unprecedented suspensions. I thought the Artest punishment was a little harsh and according to Stern, was based partially on his prior actions, not just on his actions during the actual incident. Camus is rolling over in his grave. But I digress.

So, what about the fans? I want to see arrests and prosecutions. The guy who threw the first beer at Artest should be charged with inciting a riot. The fans caught on tape throwing beer and the chair should be fined and jailed as well. They should also be banned from sporting events for life. We don’t need these type of fans cheering on our teams.

A large vocal majority acts as if the athletes are the example of what’s wrong with society. Remember, none of this spills over into the stands if the punks in Detroit don’t incite Artest. Nice fan base you got there, Champs.

Fixing the Problem

Everyone has been calling for banning or stopping the sale of alcohol after halftime. This will never happen because the markup on alcohol is unbelievably large. $7.50 for a watered down beer? Well, I better get 10 of them. Money drives the leagues so the chances of this happening are about as slim as Stephen A Smith becoming tolerable.

Here’s how you fix the problem. There’s now a very clear line separating fans from players. Any player going into the stands is thrown out of the league. Hey, there’s enough coverage of this incident where no player can claim they didn’t know. You get heated up and run in there? Too bad, you’re out of the league. Second, any fan coming on to the floor is fair game. No lawsuits. No assault charges. You come onto the floor, you’re going to get leveled. Then you’ll be sent to jail and banned from all sporting events. If you can’t control your liquor enough not to remember this, you don’t deserve to see a sporting event. When the normal rules of civil society don’t work, you have to get very draconian and establish clear black and white rules. If you know of a better solution, I want to hear it.

By the way, these rules only apply to the four major sports. NASCAR fans are encouraged to run onto the field of play.