Posted on 11/19/2004 7:54:02 PM PST by LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget
Artest was too hot headed to give security a chance to deal with it. He decided to take matters into his owns hands.
The saddest picture I saw was of father sitting with his young daughter. He had look on his face that said "I don't know what I'm doing here and I'll never be back".
Again, couldn't agree more that the fan was wrong. But Artest was wronger [sic] for going after him.
WHO here has tried to justify the beer fan's action??? Read my posts -- he's a jacka** and should be fully prosecuted by the appropriate authorities.
So should Artest and the rest of his posse.
It's a mad house!
They've turned the game into a nightmare.
And the fans. If no one ended up in the hospital after being slugged by Artest --- then I would say he barely punched anyone. A guy that size could do real damage with one blow if he chose to.
Every single one of the "fans" who threw beer or chairs at the players needs to go to jail. Even afer the game was called off and the players were headed to the locker room the beer throwing continued. First send the fans to jail, then go after the players. No one has the right to assault anyone by throwing beer and chairs at them.
Maybe you're the type who would just sit there and take things being thrown at you --- maybe you'd have no choice but to cover your head with your arms and meekly take it or you'd run away and get laughed at for it --- but the beer throwing has been going on for a while now --- the fact that no one has addressed the issue of the unruly fans --- until Artest did --- is the problem. Why pay security at all if this kind of thing just goes on?
Especially the latter -- a flying chair can kill someone. Tossing beer isn't in the same league.
There seems to be a tendency by some to blame either the players or the fans in this mess, but the truth is that both are at fault. ......the chair throwers and Artest being the worst offenders, of course.
I wouldn't say equally. The beer was thrown first --- that's how the whole thing got started --- the "fan" did it exactly to provoke a reaction. The players are being paid money to play a game --- not to have beer and chairs thrown at them. Honestly --- if someone you had no quarrel with just came up and threw something at you, would you have no reaction at all? You would just meekly stand there and take it?
It looks like not many people agree with you. I sure do. The players know that there are cameras and security almost always gets the person who threw something and they have their season tickets taken away. So they are punished. Artest and Oneil? were WAY over the line.
The fans are drunk and wrong but that is no excuse for their players to take the law into their own hands.Nobody in society is allowed to take the law into their own hands. To chase someone down and punch them in the face for throwing a cup or bottle at you is not allowed. A large percentage of basketball (other sports too) players would be in jail or close to it if it were not for their skills at throwing a ball through a hoop.
They are protected and treated as if they dont have to pay for their crimes especially in college and afterwards. They get away with a lot of stuff that would have put them in prison if it were not for the special protection.
The bottom line is a player cannot go into the stands and punch the lights out of "fans". A couple fans who did nothing wrong at all will be getting rich. Their only mistake was in paying good hard earned money to watch a "few" spoiled thugs perform.
I would guess it would depend on what caused the mild injuries that resulted. If Artest actually seriously injured someone then he should be prosecuted --- but it doesn't appear that he did injure anyone. The chair throwers should go to prison not jail --- their actions were meant to seriously injure anyone.
I tell you what, if I'm a player making 6 or 7 figures annually and my choice is either to phycially go after a guy who I suspected threw beer at me and possibly destroy my whole career (and all the money that comes with it) as a result or just bite my lip and head on into the locker room as quickly as possible, I'd do the latter. How about you?
But totally non-violent and the game officials could have handled that --- it should not have provoked a drunken fan to throw anything at him.
Well, I'm not a "professional" athlete at a public event. I CAN tell you that I wouldn't callously endanger others in my reaction or attack someone who had nothing to do with the thrown cup... like your hero the wannabe rap star and thug Artest did.
That's probably why you're not a player making 6 or 7 figures a year. I tend to duck when balls come flying through the air at me --- just my natural instincts and why I'm not too great in sports.
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