We may have witnessed the end-all, say-all low point in professional sports Friday night in Detroit.
A brawl broke out with 45 seconds left in a basketball game between the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons. It all started when Pacers forward Ron Artest flagrantly fouled Pistons big man and star forward Ben Wallace.
Wallace retaliated, undoubtedly aware of the rocky last few weeks for Artest and the drama associated with him wanting to leave the NBA and pursue a music career. Several other players joined in, and after the scuffle was broken up, Artest was hit with a full beverage cup thrown by a fan.
Artest leapt to his feet, jumped into the stands and began throwing punches at a fan who he mistakenly thought had thrown the drink. More Pacers, including Jermaine O’Neal, joined in the “crowd control” and before you knew it, a full-out brawl ensued. After that fans got down on the court and more fighting took place.
Now, I know that NBA players are much more vulnerable than athletes in other professional sports. The fans are as close as they can be to the action, many of them sitting right down on the floor. And many of them had consumed more than a few alcoholic beverages. So there is going to be the taunting and name-calling.
But no matter what a fan calls you, or throws at you, a “professional” athlete never has the right to go into the stands after a fan. The fans were certainly “chemically impaired,” but I’m starting to wonder if a lot of pro athletes aren’t impaired with different chemicals. I mean, you saw it during the baseball playoffs with the bench-clearing brawls between the Yankees and the Red Sox, not to mention other teams. And now the not-so-professional behavior has spilled over to the college ranks. A brawl in the South Carolina/Clemson football game Saturday was not quite as ugly but just as sad.
All Artest had to do is point to the guy who threw the cup and tell someone. That guy would have been promptly escorted out of the building, possibly to face criminal charges down the line. You’ve got to let the security staff at the arena do their job.
We’ve all seen over the past few weeks the volatile attitude of Ron Artest. It seems as if he’s been trying to get kicked out of the league, or at least do something so outrageous to get released from his contract. Well, he may have gotten at least part of his wish. Today, NBA Commissioner David Stern responded by slamming Artest with a suspension for the rest of the season, which amounts to 73 games. Fellow Pacers Steven Jackson and Jermaine O’Neal got 30- and 25-game suspensions, respectively. Piston Ben Wallace got popped with a six-game suspension for his reaction to Artest’s foul.
Personally, I commend Stern for these penalties, which were some of the most stringent penalties handed out in NBA history. It sends a message that these sort of shenanigans will not be tolerated. However, I think Stern should have given Artest what he wanted. Kick him out of the league, period. For the last month or so, the Pacers organization and the NBA have been playing with fire, allowing Artest to go on playing despite his extremely inflammatory and stupid behavior. And you know what they say about playing with fire. The Pacers and the NBA got burned.
The image of the young basketball fan with tears streaming down his cheeks Friday night is the saddest part. What sort of image are these athletes portraying? And it seems like every day you turn on the news and hear about another athlete accused of drug use, rape or even murder. And the message we send is that they can get away with it. Because pro athletes, who play a game for a living, are ridiculously overpaid, they can afford the best lawyers to get them out of trouble.
These athletes, whether they like it or not, whether they asked for it or not, are public figures. And since they are so high profile and are looked upon as being successful, since they make so much money, kids are going to look up to them. But as we found out Friday night, a lot of the time they don’t deserve it.
Nick Thompson is a senior communication major. He can be reached at [email protected].