What? that friend is high with Artest' stash..

Ben wanted to rip Artest into tiny pieces and would not leave the floor after he was ejected even becasue he wanted at Artest so badly.

As long as all of these suspensions are without pay, I think it is a fitting punishment. Of course, I'd still like the legal system to punish all parties appropriately as well.

I applaud the NBA's quick, decisive and just response. Unfortunately for the Indiana Fans this will most likely hurt their team's playoff chances. They may make the playoffs (maybe) but will not have home court advantage and most likely will not make the semifinals. Perhaps Artest and others like him will learn from this. Perhaps the owners and coaches will as well. I would think that Artest may have played his last game for the Pacers.

What was once a team sport has become all about the individual. This event was the culmination of that individuality leading to the ultimate in selfishness. The cost will have been so great as to cost a team a real chance at a championship!

Hopefully other sports (MLB, NFL and NHL) will also learn from what the NBA has done here. I would like to see super strict rules put in place for players leaving the bench and going into the stands, similiar to what happened to Artest.

I do believe in second chances. Hopefully Mr. Artest will seek or be ordered to get professional counseling. Hopefully he can comeback from this with a less selfish attitude. One can pray....

Artest should just retire...remember, he's a rapper, not a basketball player.

These suspensions are insane. I think it won't be hard to appeal them based on the Maxwell precedent.

Maxwell was one punch if I remember correctly. This was a long sustained brawl. I don't see the two incidents as being equivalent.

those suspensions is without pay right?

And so ends the only interesting thing to come from the NBA in years ... with the league fucking it up beyond all recognition. Come to think of it, of all the things that were predictable about this situation, this was probably the most predictable of all.

All league suspensions are without pay.

I actually, I think the most predictable thing about this situation was...

Peace keepers being suspended for leaving the bench in this case is stupid. This wasn't your run of the mill altercation and with security sitting on their asses someone needed to do something.

agreed

Sigh.....so sad.....

Wow, the second biggest news up at O State besides beating Michigan was this, finally saw it now that I'm home.

Those three fucked some people up.

Right about what I thought it would be and bang on correct. Bomber, the suspensions are the only SANE thing that happened. Maxwell is no precedent. The league has a lot of leeway here, and Maxwell did not start a riot. These are going to stick probably. The players association has filed a grievance, but even Billy Hunter said Artest should have gotten about 30 games.

To confirm, the suspensions are without pay. ESPN just put up the salary numbers:

Artest will lose $5.5 million for the 73 games.
Jackson will lose $1.8 million for 30 games.
O'Neal will lose $4.5 million for 25 games.

Throw in the criminal convictions (and maybe jail time), and it couldn't have happened to a bunch of nicer guys.

I agree with suspensions. I think they are right on for the most part and fit the crime. I think Leafs summed it up nicely. Players should never go into the stands. Ever. Fans should not be on the court. Ever. Wading into the stands and attacking folks, even if they did throw a cup full of "liquid ice" or beer or whatever, is completely unacceptable.

Ron Artest should sign with the WWE for the rest of the year, and i'm only being half joking. Busted grammar there. They could get alot of pub out of him.

I love this post!!

A low liquid? An absolute classic! Mate, if you think beer is a "low liquid" come out to Belgium sometime. Stuff is like liquid gold out here. It's amazing. The counter-argument would apply, as it would be an honor to be showered in such delicious brew!

Ever had a pepsi spice thrown on you? That shit stings. Do that to me and it's indeed fightin time, once my eyes clear up.

For me the punish is not fair.

The punish for the Indiana players is ok, but is all that mess this fault? I think the Pistons should be punished too, since they dont give the conditions to play a game in safe conditions.

For me the Pistons should play at least 10 games without public. And the NBA should rethink the situation of the public just behind the players

Come on. This is absolutely ridiculous. I would imagine that if, last Thursday night, you had a security team or the league or whoever evaluate the level of security of every NBA arena during a game, the security at the Palace would be no better or worse than any other arena. It's BS to blame the Pistons or Palace for what happened.

Obviously the part-time security staff should have anticipated the worst player-fan fight in the history of the league. They should have figured that Artest would jump into the crowd.

In every sport there are clear boundaries where the fans can go and can’t go in respect to the playing surface. But in the NBA, there are seats within spitting distance of the court. That is why they are called freaking floor seats!

If you are going to have floor seating, there is absolutely no way you can have a perfect security system.

If you eliminated floor seating, officials could easily secure the perimeter of the playing surface and insure crap like this never happens again.

The bottom line is the referees were to blame and not Palace security. The officials should have had a better sense of the situation and forced the blue shirts to escort Ben and Artest off the court before the situation deteriorated.

Every team in the NBA (hell, every Pro team) has idiot fans. Every one of them. Fans throw crap at players, onto the pitch, ice, court, field, etc. all the time. That doesn't make it right, but it happens. This whole thing would have never gotten out of control if Artest hadn't jumped up start wading through the crowd, throwing punches and attacking folk. Once that started the fans in the Palace reacted like ANY other group of fans would have reacted in any other stadium. Mob mentality takes over.

The bottom line is this never happens unless Artest was involved. If Freddy Jones attempted to flagrantly foul Big Ben (and that was what Artest’s intent was whether he fouled him hard or not), Ben walks to the free throw line.

Yeah, the Pistons fans behaved HORRIBLY, but you tell me a crowd in any city that would have acted any better if players from the opposing team rushed the stands and started pounding people.

The fans involved are thugs and should be dealt with appropriately. But so should the defensive player of the year, who is becoming a menace to society and must have been the inspiration for Cypress Hill when they wrote their penultimate song.

Also, everything that happened in the early stages of the ruckus was fairly commonplace for an NBA game.

Yes, Ron Artest took a cheap shot with less than a minute to go in the game at Ben Wallace.

And yes, Big Ben probably overreacted because of Artest’s prior history.

Then a small brawl took place between the two teams which would have received a tame rating in comparison to prior Heat-Knicks battles that featured Jeff Van Gundy holding on to ankles for dear life or Kings-Lakers throw downs that ended up with Jackie Christie beating Rick Fox with her purse.

Yeah, it was ugly and there were going to be some minor suspensions and fines, but it wasn’t really out of the norm.

That was until one idiotic fan and one certifiably insane small forward decided to alter the history of the league.

The fan who threw the cup of beer at Artest should be prosecuted for starting all of this shit. He should be banned from all future Palace events.

The Auburn Hills Police Department and Palace Security should also scour the videotapes and go after every single one of the assholes who threw food and beverage at the Pacers or idiotically squared off with Artest.


(note: much of this was lifted from: www.detroitsportsrag.com) Not a great site, but some solid points were made.

In soccer:
-The security sistems nowadays are far better than 20 years ago.
-The teams are responsable of the (mis)behaviour of the fans.


Basketball is the only big sport without a separation between the court and the public. Is that safe? Is that profitable? Also in soccer in Spain you can buy or bring any drink with alcohol.

For me Honolulu has reason in the guilties of this case. But for me too there are some unsafe conditions that allow this problem to erupt

I have been lucky enough to go to some football matches during my time in Europe. Hit Manchester/Arsenal last year and European Championships this year.

The security at these games (especially the Manchester game) are on a totally different level than what you see at any U.S. sporting event. A lot of that has to do with football and the history of violence, hooliganism, etc, etc. U.S. sports are very different. Fans of the visiting team do not have to be seated in one small section surrounded by throngs of police and then escorted out of the stadium by said police post-match. Sure, every once in a while some drunked idiots have a go, but it rarely escalates to truly dangerous levels. Then again, even with all of the heightened security and police, shit still goes down at football matches. It happens all the time. It's nearly impossible in that type of environment to prevent everything from happening.

Yes, the NBA could (and perhaps should and now may) take efforts to make the game safer for the players. But beyond erecting netting or plastic glass all around the court, there is no real security system that would prevent a fan chucking a cup of beer at a player. If anything the lack of security is a NBA problem, not a Detroit Piston/Palace problem.

I know no one will read this, and maybe someone else already said it, but I think Mahorn just wanted to get his elbows into somebody just like the old days.

Makes me glad I have an Xbox

Its looking like there will be criminal proceedings coming for fans involved in that brawl in the near future. Oakland County D.A.'s office is reviewing film, and the call is out to bring in the fat guy in the white hat who threw the beer in the first place( they know who he is and where he lives, but he surprisingly isn't staying at home at the present) for 'questioning.'

What about the player's?

Yes, that is also a high probability. Free Press columnist and radio guy Drew Sharp was on Cold Pizza this morning, along with Chris Chelios who was at the game. Sharp is pushing very hard for prosecutions of both.

Whether it's any better or worse than anywhere else, the fact remains that security was WOEFULLY inadequate. There is NO WAY Artest should have been able to get to the beer thrower before someone from security could (they don't show up, and only in small numbers, until late in that scuffle; there were more coaches and assistants breaking that up at the end than security people). When the player altercation got near the sidelines, there should have been security people down there in that area, if only to help restrain the players if necessary.

And where was security restraining fans from getting on to the court? They let a fan get in Artest's face on the court, and that's a clear gap in security. There was also no security stopping fans from dumping all kinds of junk on the Pacers as they left the court (I think I saw one security guy on one side of the railing trying to hold people back).

This incident showed just how woefully inadequate security is at an NBA game, and the league needs to take steps to improve it. Again I'll point out (did earlier in this thread) that the Yankees had police in riot gear for the ALCS, and brought them out at one point when it looked like things were getting testy. At least they showed some forethought.

That's why I think the arena (and the Pistons organization depending on their level of involvement with arena security on NBA nights) needs to take some of the blame for this getting that far out of hand.

It is certainly right to put some of the blame on the organization, but the point I was trying to make, which I think you agree with, is that it's a league-wide issue. I don't reckon the security at any other NBA game that night would have been significantly any better or more prepared for what transpired. They certainly muffed the job though, no doubt about that. Madness ensued.

Bill Laimbeer's(?) combat basketball is an all time classic. It's worth keeping a Super Nintendo around, just for a little one on one when the old gang comes by.

Artest/O'Neal For President in 08'

"Power to the People!"

Sorry '08 is the scheduled release of Artest's 4th album. Promoting it will be far too time consuming to allow for a presidential bid.

I was at an Eagles concert about ten years ago at Irvine Meadows. It is a near duplicate of the Mountain View Ampitheater, with a modest number of seats in front of large berm of open seating on picnic blankets and the like. Well they made a small mistake in Irvine. The Berm is not high enough to allow the first rows of the berm to sit, and see over people standing in the last row of seats.

For the duration of the Eagles concert the people in the seats felt no reason to use them, so my friends and I in the front row of the Berm were pretty much required to stand for the duration of the concert. This cause problems for the people directly behind us, and directly behind them, and so on. Well at first there were just jeers from the crowd behind us. Then one of my friends got hit with some trash, something like a wadded up food wrapper. Then some empty paper cups were tossed at us. Now I started to steam. I hadn't seen anyone throw anything, but my back was getting pelted. I had words with the couple behind me when something seemed to come from too low a trajectory. It was seriously screwing with my enjoyment of the concert, but I hadn't boiled over yet.

Then, seconds before the band took a quick break for intermission, the beer hit me. The rage that came up cannot be explained. I went un-freakingly mad. It was the one time in my adult life that I have had to be restrained to keep from hitting someone. My friends were wondering what the hell had happened. Just all of the sudden I had gone Berserk, and fully intended to kick everyone's ass. So yes, Easy Mac does have a point, having beer thrown on you is much more infuriating than most other things. Oh on the bright side...during the second half of the concert, not one thing was thrown at us.

Why is beer so special? Pepsi is ok but beer no?

What about popcorn?

Well, for one thing beer smells really bad...

A nice article with Artest's Dad's reaction to the incident.

hxxp://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=1929385

Bumpity. Too bad this one is in the archives now.

Nice one year bump, steve. I barely noticed it:)