Just started to look up some videos on this after watching some Pistons games or whatever and I wasn't watching NBA at the time, so I basically wanted to see how people feel about everything that went down. To me, with the bit of information about the incident, the suspensions and security changes, it seems like it was just an accident waiting to happen. I believe in hindsight that some suspensions were too hefty. Mainly Artest, but I guess because of Ron's history and the image of the NBA, someone had to take the fall. From security down to the tone of Stern and comments made by TV crew and such, I feel that the players should've been defended and self protection should've been taken into account more. SAS and others right after the game came to the defense of the players, which I think was good. It looked very scary and in a game like that, anybody would've reacted that way. Teammates of Artest stood by his side so you cannot fault them either. Did some of those fans ever get arrested? Did Detroit / Pistons organisation suffer any consequences because of the incident? How big an impact do you think it had? I guess it's good nothing like this has happened since and really makes this particular incident that more interesting. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Thank you.
You should read this. Very exhaustively covers many angles: http://grantland.com/features/an-oral-history-malice-palace/
If Artest wanted to fight, he should've fought Wallace. You know, the guy who started everything. But, smaller people usually aren't the aggressor in these type of situations.