Nonsense. Do you want this to happen again or do you want to fix the problem? Artest, through this incident and the accumulation of other incidents, has to be stopped dead in his tracks. He has to change his behavior, period, or get out of the league. The only way to get to him is to make the team forfeit some games and suspend him for a good long while, possibly the season. This should be his last warning. The next time he gets involved with fans, he should be kicked out of the league the same way a repeat drug offender is booted. Exact same thing goes for Ben Wallace. It is unfortunate but he should pay the price for escalating this and enciting the crowd to riot when the foul wasnt really that bad. He should be suspended for a couple months and the Pistons should have to forfeit about 10 games. If Stern wants this to be the NBA where the worlds greatest athletes gather and play the greatest game on earth, he has to send out a strong statement that all this circus WWE NBA STYLE entertainment is not acceptable any more.
Maybe the FCC will get involved? I would be very surprised if 3 Indiana players didn't go to jail. Also, some of those fans as well. The Detroit players incited it by making more out of it than it was. Maybe some of them should go to jail, too? Some heavy fines and suspensions are imminent. I can't believe all that happened. Jackson should go to jail for a year. He was acting like he was in the ghetto in a fit of rage. O'Neal for clocking that one fan who just got back up. Jail. I feel bad for that old lady who was down. She could have died on the spot in that stressful mess.
Jermaine Oneal suckered punch the fan, who was clearly just trying to recooperate from the Artest punch. Oh yeah he deserves my lifetime respect also. NOT!!! I'm not saying the fan had the right to be on the court.
The respect points come from defending teammates. I don't care what that guy was doing. If you go after a teammate, I'm all business.
definitely. this is huge. you need the message but how far can you go when the fans start it. i'm glad i don't have to make the decision cuz it's going to be tough.
What do you think? Do you see some 10 or 20 game suspensions coming with six figure fines? And, that's only the NBA.
About 5 kids wanted to fight me in one of my last football games because I stuck up for my quarterback. I played by the rules(pretty much), but they didn't like it. I guess that's just me though. It's dog eat dog.
Fans provoked. They threw the first object. And once it's chaos, everyone will not be in natural circumstances. It's a riot and people do what they have to due to survive. Now as far as law suits, if the fans sue the players, players should countrsuit on how much this event traumatized their career.
a. how can you possible want that for wallace? he is not a repeat offender and has been one of the good guys it seems for a while. all he did was start an ordinary NBA fight that was over (except for pushing and shoving on the side) before it started. hard push, maybe 1 or 2 games is all you would get for that normally. how can you say ben should know the fans were going to go crazy and the pacers would go crazier? his actions warrant a small suspension. he did nothing to start this incident that didn't start until about a minute later when a fan threw a drink on artest. after that, ben tried to stop it. maybe you add one or two games for going into the stands, but realistically, it was probably necessary for peacemaking players to go into the stands as they are the only guys around strong enough to stop other nba players. b. no one is forfeiting games. that is ridiculous. you suspend who you suspend and play on and change security. hell, i'll just go to a san antonio game and start a huge fan fight and get san antonio 10 losses in a row.
yeah, just saw that. that was pretty terrible. hopefully she's ok. man this story is just so huge. it feels wrong for SC to show any other highlights right now. on the bright side, i have wade, stoudemire, and stoudamire on my fantasy team and they are the 3 leading scorers in the league tonight.
I've been watching basketball for 25 years. This is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. This is a black eye for the league. To see little terrified children in the stands crying is one of the worst things I've ever seen in professional sport. The NBA, the city of Detroit and both of these teams should be ashamed of themselves for whatever part they played in this.
There will be soooo much presure from people to have Stern lay the hammer down.... I think this will be CRAZY in the next few days. This is a sad day for the NBA and I am sad to have called it the best sport..
You got a very valid and legitmate point. Ben overreacted. That's for sure. But tell me which nba playe wouldn't do the same under that circumstances. Ben had no control of what fans did after Artest changed into that poor guy.
Agree with you Jeff.. That picture of crying kid is not going away from mind. It's definitely the most disgusting thing i've seen too...
The fans have got to take the majority of the blame here. Players get in altercations, let them settle it on the court. Sure, Ben Wallace started the whole thing...sure, Artest, Jackson, and O'neal among others were swinging left and right...but if the fans stay out of it, nothing would've happened other than maybe players fighting. Personally, I think the NBA should stay out of what happened in the stands...let the law take care of it just like it would in typical assault cases, but of course that's not going to happen. It's sad that Artest will probably get sued for millions, when the fans were just as guilty of assault as he was. What a disgrace.
