Posted on 11/23/2004 12:37:54 PM PST by M 91 u2 K
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com Firm stand on fans gone wild
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004
Ron Artest got his, and good. Now he loses a season out of his basketball prime, and his earning prime, because he couldn't control himself. He crossed the line and went into the stands and paid the highest price anyone in his sport has ever paid. Artest was helpless in that moment against his own temper and impulses and perhaps even his own demons. "They said everything to Jackie Robinson in 1947," Doc Rivers was saying yesterday. "If he didn't go into the stands, no one is allowed to go into the stands."
We know who polices the NBA now. Commissioner David Stern does. But who polices the stands?
Nobody is defending Artest or Stephen Jackson or Jermaine O'Neal. Once they went over that scorer's table the other night, there was no protection for anybody close to the court. Any parent watching that scene knew something: If you were sitting in those first few rows of seats, if you were in the middle of that small riot, there would have been no way to protect your children. It is a miracle no one was seriously injured the other night, even with as many empty seats as there were in Auburn Hills in a blowout loss for the Pistons.
We know what happened to players who acted like punks. Now what do we do about all the punks in the stands? What do we do about about some coward who threw a chair up into the stands once Artest and the rest of the Pacers were up there? Should Artest and O'Neal have considered the consequences of throwing punches at that fat guy who came walking onto the court in his Tigers cap and Pistons jersey? You bet. Here is a better question:
What did that slob think was going to happen when he came walking out there?
What about the fans on the other side of the court who thought they could shower the Pacers' players and coaches with anything they wanted as they tried to get to the locker room? Sure, maybe Pistons' fans, with their delicate feelings, thought Artest was taunting them by stretching out on the scorer's table the way he did. So that gives the punk who threw the beer on him a right to do that? On what planet?
Was Artest's response completely inappropriate? Even he's probably figured that out by now. So was the throwing of the beer. Artest seemed to pick out the wrong guy to go after. Wouldn't you like to know who the right guy was?
I'll tell you who he was. Way too many times, he's the guy sitting next to you at the game.
This is the culture we've created in an interactive sports world, and if you don't think it is, get your head out of the sand. Say anything you want about athletes if you can manage to get through on the radio. Come to the game and think you can say anything you want to. Wait outside the ballpark to yell a little more as the other team's bus pulls into the night.
This isn't just the stands at The Palace Friday night. It's people showing up at a ballpark wearing a shirt that says "Yankees Suck" or "Boston Sucks" and thinking that's cute. Or the people leaning over a bullpen fence and taunting the pitchers out there. Is the right response throwing a chair at them, the way Frank Francisco of the Texas Rangers did? Of course not. But those faces are too often the faces of sports.
Ask any NBA coach about what it is like to go into Indianapolis and play the Pacers, and to a man they will tell you about an awful, foul-mouthed woman who sits near the visiting team's bench. Ask any parent who takes his or her children to games how many times they wanted to go find an usher and ask the usher to come back to their section and shut somebody up.
Why do they think they can get away with language and behavior that would get their lights punched out on the street? Because they paid all that money for their tickets, that's why.
There are too many people these days, way too many, who say they love sports but hate modern athletes. Some of this is racial and some of it is financial. Sometimes it is both.
So you know who polices the stands in the end? You do. If somebody is out of line, you call security. If you see somebody throw something, call security. You know what happens if they want to pull somebody's ticket at a place like the Garden? They do it. In that moment, making the stands more civil isn't David Stern's job. It's everybody's.
Oh, yeah. Artest and Stephen Jackson and Jermaine O'Neal, they got taken down hard. They got tried and convicted fast. The commissioner policed his sport. It is a pipe dream that he can police his fans. And that isn't an indictment of all fans any more than what happened with the Pacers and Pistons is an indictment of all players.
"The commissioner had to do what he did," Doc Rivers says, "so people wouldn't get the idea that what happened Friday night is our whole league."
He's right. All players don't cross the line. All fans don't cross the line. But more and more of them do, even if they don't have a beer in their hands. If you still pay the prices and go to the games, you know. You see it and hear it all the time, from the seat next to you, or behind you, or one section over, no matter how much those seats cost. If you don't try to stop it, no one will.
It's high time for this stupid Jerry Springer mentality to end on BOTH sides of the sports arena
I think that "slob" was a teenage boy who worked as a towel boy.
Racial?? More people hate modern athletes because of race?
"Artest was helpless in that moment against his own temper and impulses and perhaps even his own demons."
He WAS in control. He had enough control NOT to go after Wallace but to go after some drunken fan.
Best and worst combative fan moment I've witnessed: Giants vs. Jets exhibition game.
Guy in the crowd is loudly insulting the Giants in colorful language. Starts banging on Giants fans.
I quote: "You Giants fans are all f*gs! The Giants suck! I'm so drunk!" I kid you not.
I look up to see that the heckling is coming from the handicapped area.
Just then he shouts out: "I'll take on any p*ssy Giants fan! . . . I'll take on all you f*ggots! . . . I don't have any legs!"
Unbelievable.
That's the first I have heard of this although it did look like a towel in his left hand as he was attempting to get back up only to be cold-cocked by O'Neal.
It's too late, Doc. The NBA will never again be it was when you came into the league, and Bird and Magic and Michael were the standard of both performance and decorum.
The more I see of other pro sports leagues the more I like the CFL. Even Ticat fans in Toronto are more civilized.
It was reported this morning that the guy who threw the cup did not throw beer. It was supposedly pop. He, without a doubt, should be held accountable.
Once the players went into the stands and started attacking innocent people however they deserved to have everything and more thrown at them.
The guy that Artest attacked? Innocent bystander. The guy who threw the drink on Artest as he was attacking the innocent guy? Supposedly a friend of the kid coming to the aid of his buddy. Artest is lucky the kid didn't do worse. If I was at a game and Artest had attacked one of my innocent friends you can bet that Artest would have gotten worse than a drink thrown on him.
If Artest can't control himself when some moron throws a cup of pop at him then maybe he should get out of the basketball buisiness. And his claims of having things thrown at him on two previous occasions? Lies concocted to garner sympathy.
I have no sympathy for any fans that will be charged nor any players that will be charged. They're all morons and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an NBA game ever again.
I agree that the fans acted in a terrible fashion. However, a man should not be taunted into committing violence over something as trivial as a game. When I served in Germany during the Cold War, we occasionally had leftest punk demonstrators do everything they could think of to goad an American soldier into lashing out with violence and thereby creating an international incident. Those young soldiers were far from home, under great stress, and paid only a few hundred dollars a month but they were able to maintain their composure and never resorted to the violence that the left was trying to provoke. Be a man and remember what your mother said "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me."
What did they think the fan base for thug ball was going to look like? Fathers, mothers, and their 2.3 children? (At at cost of $200+ per game?) The fans on display at the Detroit game match their intended demographic pretty well. Who could have guessed that the main market for thug ball would turn out to be height-deficient thugs? Duh.
That's absolutely hilarious.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
I don't get why fans get lighter punishments then the players and in fact I don't even get why players are being held to some higher standard, could someone please explain it too me?
Is it because they make butt loads of cash? What does butt loads of cash have to do with being human?
If I were walking down the street and you threw a beer in my face, cup and all, we fought, we got arrested, what would the punishment be? That's the LEGAL punishment this player should face, I don't care how much money he makes. The NBA is going to do whats best for the NBA but even still they don't seem to be protecting their players either. YOu don't hear about the NBA going after a fan legally, you don't even hear about a francise going after a fan legally. Imagine how polite we'd all be if the NBA might sue us for interferring with their company?
I'm starting to think its envy, envy of all that money they make, so collectively we punish them above and beyond how we'd punish another poor smuck like ourselves.
Its wrong.
Is it a permit to be a $hithead if you buy a ticket? When I was in HS we, as fans, were instructed by our school to have good sportsmenship and anything past the word BOOO was punishable, whats wrong with that?
When I was growing up there were fans who talked trash to players, but NEVER, NEVER did a fan throw something at a player.
I think Artest was simply practicing for the next Vibe awards.
I would have been laughing so hard I'd have pissed myself. A real life Forest Gump moment, you should feel priveledged that the good lord put you there to experience it.
You can pay a thug millions of dollars and all you get is a rich thug. I agree, however, that the so-called fans (fanatics) are very much to blame, too.
Now THAT could very well be considering that he thinks he has a budding career in rap.
The guy is a punk on so many levels it's funny. "Can I have a month off to promote my new record?" Sure, in the offseason. Now shut up and play.
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