“NBA Basketball: I used to love it a lot more…Part II”
by Marquis Parker

A few months ago, I wrote an article for The NetWork entitled “The NBA Playoffs: I used to love it a lot more” in which I described how the NBA Playoffs have been letting me down for the past few years. The excitement of that time of year had gone away and I could feel my intensity for professional basketball fading. All of that changed during this year’s Playoffs when I watched the Detroit Pistons complete one of the greatest upsets in NBA Finals history when they beat the Los Angeles Lakers in five games. The Pistons win led to the dismantling of the Lakers legacy team and I thought that I’d finally have a reason to start loving the game again because it would continue to get more and more exciting. Then, one of the worst moments in sports history happened in Detroit on Friday, November 19, 2004 and I think it’ll be a long time before the NBA can recover from it.

On that night, the Detroit Pistons played the Indiana Pacers, their 2003-2004 Eastern Conference Finals opponent, in a game that was supposed to be the first look at what would likely be the match-up in this season’s Eastern Conference Finals series. Everything was fine until a hard foul against Detroit’s Ben Wallace by Indiana’s Ron Artest led to a scuffle among the players from the teams with less than 46 seconds left in the game. While the fight was being broken up by official and coaches, a fan threw a full cup of beer at Artest and hit him in the face causing one of the most terrifying scenes that I’ve ever seen in sports. Artest rushed in the crowd and attacked the fan that he thought threw the cup at him and one of his teammates, Stephen Jackson, followed him in the stands where he attacked several fans. Soon after, there were fights all over that section of the stands involving fans and players. When Artest was finally pulled from the stands, he made matters worse by attacking two other fans on the edge of the court with the kind of blows that would send many boxers to the canvas.

Next, in what I thought was the wildest part of the entire scene, Jermaine O’Neal, the Pacers best player, who stands at 6’10”, drew back and hit a fan who couldn’t have been much taller than 5’5” with a blow to the jaw that would have knocked him out cold if O’Neal hadn’t slipped while approaching him. In the end, the fights were broken up in the stands and the game was called, but the ugliness continued as fans pelted the Indiana players with beers, sodas, and other assorted items as they entered the tunnel to go to the locker rooms. When I saw a clip of the entire event as it unfolded, I was floored and couldn’t believe what I had seen. This is the worst thing that could have happened for a league that is dealing with image issues and is still trying to recover from the malaise of the post-Jordan era.

In the days since the brawl, I’ve had many conversations with people who think the Indiana players were justified in going in the stands to fight the fans, but I believe that there was no worse thing that they could have done. Some might disagree, but here is the basis of my opinion:

1. NBA players are professionals and should act with a certain amount of decorum. Anyone who knows sports knows that fans will sometimes do stupid things in support of their teams. Those actions aren’t justified, but the fervor that motivates those actions is what keeps the profits rolling in for the NBA. I realize that NBA players have feelings and may react harshly to negative actions, but they also get paid millions to play a kid’s game and a lot of responsibility comes with that level of salary. They have to be willing to turn the other cheek and walk away if confronted. They have to block out the noise and distractions that may affect their performance and careers. They have to do whatever they can to continue to benefit from the gifts they’ve been given and not allow some idiot’s words or actions risk their futures. Think about it…if someone came into your job site and showered you with insults, you’d want to react, but, chances are, you would never raise a hand to that person for fear of losing your job. It’s too bad that the Indiana players didn’t think about it this way.

2. NBA players make a lot of money…let me repeat that…A LOT OF MONEY!!! So, any person that gets attacked by a player will reason to file a huge lawsuit against that player. There are already plenty of people who are looking to get rich off of these young men, so does it make any sense for these players to make that any easier for those people? We live in an overly litigious society and I am willing to bet money that there were a million and one lawyers in the Detroit area scrutinizing the video tapes of the brawl in hopes of being able to find some information that would help them identify the fans who were punched by the Indiana players. Furthermore, I have a feeling that there will be a lot of law office reception phones ringing tomorrow from people who will claim that they were among the people who were attacked. When the legal fees for these lawsuits are deducted from a yearly salary that will already be reduced because of league suspensions, Artest, O’Neal, and Jackson will be lucky if they make any money this season.

3. This is the last thing that the NBA needed in an era where stories about the Portland “Jailblazers”, Kobe Bryant’s brush with the law, and players’ other crimes and indiscretions are resonating in potential fans’ minds. Everyone knew that the NBA would have a hard time maintaining its popularity after Michael Jordan retired, but it seems that the very people who get high benefit from the NBA (the players) are doing everything that they can to make fans not want to support the league. I know that it is difficult to stay calm in the face of the sort of treatment that the Detroit fans were giving the Pacers that night, but the Indiana fans should have stayed in control, not only for the sake of their own livelihood but also for that of their fellow players.

4. Assault is a crime punishable by time behind bars. If the above reasons aren’t enough to make the players keep their cool, then this thought definitely should be. After seeing the drama that Kobe Bryant went through last season, shouldn’t these players have thought more about the risk of jail time before throwing punches at fans? And doing it on national television is just plain mindless as far as I see it. Many players in the NBA are the first ones in their families and/or communities to make it and I would hate to think about the lasting negative effect that seeing a loved one throw his future away would have on these folks.

At this point, arguing over whether it was right or wrong for the players to have confronted the fans is a moot point because what’s done is done. This is going to be a black eye that the NBA will have to cure slowly over the next few months and possibly years. Commissioner David Stern and his staff better get that NBA marketing machine working on overdrive because they have a lot of damage control to do in order to keep this from having a permanent effect on attendance at their games.

NBA Basketball…I used to love it a lot more…

Nathan Froe debates Marquis Parker on this issue in "Stern Punishment"

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