Throwdown in Motown

Dear Commissioner Stern.
I invoke the spirits of Washington and Tomjonavich and beg you to do the right thing.  The fiasco that happened in Detroit is easily the worst thing that has happened to the NBA in over 20 years. I personally do not entirely blame the players nor do I entirely blame the fans.  But on some level the players must be held responsible for their actions.
If the world were just, Ben Wallace, Ron Artest, and Jermaine O’Neal would be suspended without pay for the remainder of this season.  Furthermore, every game in the Palace at Auburn Hills would have restrictions against the sale of alcohol.  Now I know this sounds harsh, but this was an unprecedented incident that needs to be dealt with in an extreme way.  

So let’s get it straight.  With less than a minute to go in the game and Indiana leading by 15 points Ben Wallace drives the lane for what looks like an easy bucket.  Ron Artest give him a hard foul, not as hard as some of the muggings Bill Lambeer used to hand out, but a hard foul nonetheless.  So it’s an unnecessarily hard foul in a game that is all but over anyways.  This confirms that Ron Artest is nothing more than a simple thug that can hit a jumpshot every now and again.  

Next Ben Wallace completely overreacts to the foul and rushes Artest, hitting him in the face.  At the very least this warrants a heavy suspension and fine for Wallace.  But that’s not enough for Big Ben, he continues to try to provoke a fight despite attempts by coaches, teammates, and officials to diffuse the situation.  The sad thing is that before this incident he was considered one of the best guys in the league.  Whether orr not this incident was an isolated one or not, it should be dealt with authoritatively.

Ron Artest had lay down on the scorers table and was seeming to begin to cool off.  Then a fan threw a beer on his face.  This is when the mêlée really began.  Artest sprung off the table and rushed into the stands.  Jackson followed him and the two began a brawl with fans.  What followed was one of the ugliest incidents of player vs. fan violence in sports history.  Both the fans involved and the players own fault in this one.  Furthermore, the officials and the league own a  piece of it too.

What we have to remember is that these guys are still basically kids, Artest is 25 and Jackson 26.  They did not react in a mature way and this is partially because they are still emotionally immature.  Let me say this clearly: No athlete in professional sports has reasonable justification to go into the stands and attack a fan.  Nor do they have the right to retaliate against a fan attacking them, it doesn’t seem right but it’s true.

The other thing that you have to remember is that this is Detroit.  Unfortunately this great city has once again received another black mark on it’s image.  The sad thing is that this is a select group of fans that are ruining the situation for everyone.  No fan should attack a player either physically or by throwing things at the players.  this is simply unacceptable.  

Finally, more than any of the people involved, I blame the league and the Pistons ownership.  First of all the league has got to do something to separate the fans from the players.  The interaction between athlete and spectator in the NBA is more consistently intimate than in any other sport, this clearly has to change.  Players have been complaining about this sort of abuse for years, the truth is it’s amazing that something like this hasn’t happened already.  I blame the Pistons ownership because there clearly was not adequate security measures in place.  Obviously this is the worst case scenario, but also it’s clear that dealing with a situation like this one had never been discussed.

In closing I will say this.  It took an extraordinary amount of time and hard work for the NBA to shed the image of being a league of thugs.  Throughout the 1970’s professional basketball in a lot of ways resembled Hockey in that every team had an enforcer to handle situations involving the star player and hard fouls.  Without the amazing work done by Commissioner Stern and the superb play of gentlemen like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird the league may have never lost that label.  Now the NBA is in danger of slipping back into this same sort of quagmire.  Something drastic must be done to avert this.  Please Commissioner Stern, do something that will be viewed as a historic stand against this sort of violence.