11/20/04: WWENBA

This Pacers-Pistons brawl was just astonishing. Just an awful, awful scene. At verbungle.com, when there is a melee, we like to break it down and assign some blame.  You recall us doing this with the Zimmer-Pedro incident last year:

More recently, we felt pretty much alone in our defense of the actions of Dodgers outfielder Milton Bradley after an incident in which he sought out a fan who had thrown a beer bottle at him:

So you can probably guess where we're going to go in our post-game blame session here. But you don't pay the $9.95 verbungle.com monthly subscription fee so you can guess what we're going to say. You pay it so you can get insightful analysis from our award-winning team of veteran reporters. So let's get to it.  This time, there was such chaos, so much wild stuff going on, that we don't feel we can accurately distribute the blame among all the participants.  So we are going to evaluate all the major players on a report card-style scoring system.  No particular order here.

1) Ron Artest: B
Yes, Ron-Ron is crazy.  And yes, his hard foul on Wallace was more than a bit excessive considering there were 45 seconds left in the game and his team was up 15. But when you play with an edge, like Artest does, like Charles Oakley did, you can't necessarily just shut it off based on clock and score. That said, from the moment after the foul was committed through the final punch, I can't really find a thing to blame him for. He didn't retaliate when Wallace shoved him hard in the face. He laid on the scorer's table even after Wallace threw a towel at him.  He was fucking trying, man. Going into the stands after a fan might not have been smart, but it was more than understandable.  And dropping that fat kid in the Pistons jersey who was approaching him on the court was also justified.  The minute that fan stepped onto the court, he was looking to get socked.  And socked he was.  Sure, Artest threw some haymakers.  But he took an extraordinary amount of shit before he went berzerker. I can't blame him too much for this, except for the little fact that he started the whole thing with his rugged foul.

2) Ben Wallace: D
Yeah it was a bad foul.  And I understand he was probably pissed about losing the game. But he went after Artest way too hard, first with the face-shove maneuver*, and then with the throwing of the towel from behind a crowd like a little bitch. He escalated things and probably bears the main responsibility for igniting the brawl.

3) Rasheed Wallace: A-
You kind of always knew Rasheed was a good guy, didn't you? Sure he's whacky, but he's got a big heart and he tried his damnedest first to diffuse the fight, then to protect the players in the stands without throwing punches himself. My only complaint is that he sort of violently threw himself in between the initial combatants, which may have made things a little hotter than they already were.

4) Stephen Jackson: D
Jackson was a bad pickup for Indiana, I think. He's just a knucklehead, and he proved it by jumping in the middle of the initial Wallace-Artest fracas, pulling up his jersey and offering to fight anybody in a Pistons jersey. Then he went crazy throwing punches in the stands, too, but I can't really blame him for this, because he was defending Artest.

5) Jermaine O'Neal: B-
Tim Legler made a good point in his discussion of the brawl -- he said that players take all sorts of vicious verbal abuse throughout their careers, and they can't react.  So the minute they are justified in reacting because they're being physically threatened, players are going to take some shots.  I kind of thought this applied to O'Neal more than anybody else. He was looking to punch some people out.  That said, he also got in a beautiful right cross on Fat Kid, even if it was a bit of a sucker punch.  And if I was Artest or anybody else involved, I am pretty proud to have O'Neal as my teammate.  He stepped up and defended his boys. He also took the brunt of the flying objects being tossed from the stands, which was just nauseating. His anger was pretty well justified.

6) Larry Brown: C-
I love Larry Brown.  I love the smooth, bullshitty way he talks, I think he's a great coach and he seems like a decent character. But he was pretty impotent in calming the crowd, just standing there with the microphone looking scared.  Not that he really could have done much.  But he also annoyed me after the game, saying with disbelief, "That's not our fans." Company man.  That IS your fans. They just proved it. Which brings us to...

7) The Pistons Fans: F
Just like I can't condemn every Oklahoman for the 53% of them who voted for Coburn, I can't blame all the Pistons fans for the behavior of some of them tonight. But there were way too many -- WAY, WAY, too many -- of them involved tonight to call it anything but a disgrace. Brawling, running on the court, throwing shit -- just shameful. They are notorious for brutal, racist taunts.  They are not good fans.  Larry Brown is delusional if he thinks "that's not our fans." Bullshit. He also tried to trace the whole thing back to Artest's hard foul. Whatever.  It was a bad foul, but what ensued was much badder. I want to single out a few fans who I think should be in jail:
a) fat kid in the jersey who got dropped (and his twin, who was right behind him).
b) dude in baseball hat who may have thrown initial bottle that hit Artest, then gave Artest several cranium punches while Artest was attacking somebody else.  This guy better hope Artest doesn't get a good look at the tape.
c) fat security-looking dude who blindsided Fred Jones
d) whoever threw the chair
But there were lots more...

8) Joe Dumars: C-
Again, I like Dumars.  And he's not completely wrong when he says players can't go in the stands NO MATTER WHAT. But again, he's a company man for failing to come right out and blame the fans.  They are the ones who should be most ashamed of this incident, and he shouldn't be so quick to come down on the players, which seems like a backhanded way of defending the fans.  The Pistons chairman was also interviewed and he tried to pin it on Artest, even hinting that Artest shouldn't have laid on the scorer's table because he provided too good a target for the fans.  And I suppose rape victims that dress provocatively are to blame for whatever happens to them, too? He gets an F, whatever his name is.

9) Rick Mahorn: B+
Way to try to break things up, Rick. I still wouldn't fuck with you.

10) The ESPN Crew: B+
Breen: A-: I don't really care for him, but he remained composed throughout the chaos and kept us pretty well updated.  He also rightly came down hard on the fans right away.
Walton: D: the problem with becoming a caricature and treating the game like a joke is that when something seroius happens, you're unprepared to offer up much more than a "this is a disgrace." Thanks, Red. Then, when he finally got composed enough to say more than five obvious words, he was not nearly sympathetic enough to the players who went into the stands.**
Legler/Anthony/Saunders: A-: solid opinions backed up with personal anecdotes.
Stephen A. Smith: A: he was all over the story and he didn't get too emotionally involved. This allowed him to remain, uncharacteristically, the calmest voice in the room.  He also gave some very good analysis of what happened.

So to review. the ultimate Gas face goes to the Pistons fans, or, rather, the 15% of them who behaved in a completely unacceptable manner. But there are more gas faces to go around.

***

I think the GISG search game took a turn for the worse today.  Sorry about the whole "migrant" thing. We will make an effort to give better images from here on out, and at this point we just want to make it through the game without anymore controversy.

* Although the shove was quite impressive, the best of its kind since N. SIta defended our honor at Coney Island High ca. 1998 with a two-armed shove of a drunken troublemaker. Sita's shove launched the phrase "You shoved the shit out of him."
** I do wish the players hadn't gone into the stands; it did make things worse.  But I can't honestly say I blame them.