Saturday, November 20, 2004
A pathetic display: I suspect the blogosphere, as a friend of mine calls it, is going ballistic over the Pacers-Pistons version of Smackdown. So I will offer my thoughts just to get in the mix...
This was truly disgusting. I didn't see it live, but ESPN aired the entire melee on SportsCenter. And the ESPN crew was right, there is blame to go all around in that situation. Ben Wallace shouldn't have pushed Ron Artest, it wasn't that hard a foul. And the fans shouldn't have been throwing bottles, popcorn, beer, you name it, at the players. And the players shouldn't have gone into the stands to beat on people.
But my question is, why did it get to the point where a hard foul with 45 seconds to go could escalate it to that level? Were the fans that drunk? Were they that mad that the Pacers pretty much dominated the Pistons on their home floor? This was not a playoff game, nor a regular season game that really mattered that much.
The brawl is not the problem in my mind. My problem is the ripple-effects on the NBA. Are they going to make the teams play games inside a steel cage to keep the fans under control? Are they going to remove the courtside seats so fans can't get near the players? By far one of the neatest things about basketball is the fans can literally sit right on the action without any real fear of injury. Baseball fans must worry about wayward bats and foul balls. Football and hockey fans would be killed if they were allowed to sit right on the field or rink.
Are we going to have to worry about belligerent fans like Europeans do during soccer matches? I really hope not. Maybe I'm still overly naive, but I don't want our sports games to feel like a police state. We need security, but I don't want to be handcuffed to the seat or dragged to jail because I yelled a little louder than allowed.
This was truly disgusting. I didn't see it live, but ESPN aired the entire melee on SportsCenter. And the ESPN crew was right, there is blame to go all around in that situation. Ben Wallace shouldn't have pushed Ron Artest, it wasn't that hard a foul. And the fans shouldn't have been throwing bottles, popcorn, beer, you name it, at the players. And the players shouldn't have gone into the stands to beat on people.
But my question is, why did it get to the point where a hard foul with 45 seconds to go could escalate it to that level? Were the fans that drunk? Were they that mad that the Pacers pretty much dominated the Pistons on their home floor? This was not a playoff game, nor a regular season game that really mattered that much.
The brawl is not the problem in my mind. My problem is the ripple-effects on the NBA. Are they going to make the teams play games inside a steel cage to keep the fans under control? Are they going to remove the courtside seats so fans can't get near the players? By far one of the neatest things about basketball is the fans can literally sit right on the action without any real fear of injury. Baseball fans must worry about wayward bats and foul balls. Football and hockey fans would be killed if they were allowed to sit right on the field or rink.
Are we going to have to worry about belligerent fans like Europeans do during soccer matches? I really hope not. Maybe I'm still overly naive, but I don't want our sports games to feel like a police state. We need security, but I don't want to be handcuffed to the seat or dragged to jail because I yelled a little louder than allowed.
