By now every person on Earth has seen the video of last Friday's brawl at Auburn Hills arena, the worst case of fan-player violence at an American sporting event. The image of one of basketball's "bad guys," the Detroit Pistons' Ron Artest, mentally destabilizing before our eyes after being belted with a cup of beer was simply surreal. The idiom "he just snapped" was invented for these kinds of moments.
I hope the image of Detroit further establishing itself as one of the top three places in America you don't want to be caught dead in at night, doesn't haunt those of you fortunate enough to call D-town home. All sports fans are just a little bit more ashamed of themselves after watching the way fellow fans physically assaulted and demeaned the very people we sometimes live for.
It is truly a day of mourning for American sports.
Now why does a fight that spawned no major injuries have such vast cultural implications? Brawls have happened before in the NBA as well as in many other pro sports including baseball and hockey (a sport that condones and even celebrates fisticuffs), but this one will produce fundamental changes to the way the NBA is marketed as well.
Some pundits are blaming the brawl on hip-hop nation's cultural values. When a pitcher intentionally hits a batter, sportswriters shrug it off as a problem between individuals. Yet the increased violence in basketball is supposedly due to basketball's infatuation with building a type of rugged, street credibility and thus embracing hip-hop. Purists decry that not only are the NBA's individuals flawed - the Philadelphia 76ers' Allen Iverson is their favorite target - but also the entire set of values the sport embodies is at blame. Artest's involvement in this fracas just adds to their argument. Not only is Artest the most suspended player in the league, but he's also a rapper and R&B producer.
For the remainder of the now-tarnished NBA season, the NBA will begin to disassociate itself from hip hop. Commercials might no longer feature acts like the Black Eyed Peas and halftime shows will promote safer artists. And just as the NFL shut down the ESPN television series "Playmakers" because it was bad marketing for the NFL, the NBA has the weight to end programs like the AND 1 street ball tours which are wildly successful among urban, hip-hop influenced youth.
Of course, doing any of this would be incredibly foolish because, more than any other sport, the NBA draws its cultural weight from hip-hop culture. It remains cutting edge because hip hop has embraced it. If the NBA breaks the relationship, don't be surprised if the youth of America suddenly realize that the NBA's over-regulated game is a morass of slow-moving, foul-plagued intervals of poor shooting.
Hip-hop culture is not to blame. The fan behavior the league has allowed to fester in its buildings is the major reason for Friday's incident. Though one beer-lobbing idiot might have physically incited the brawl, it was the entire stadium that pushed Artest to the edge by taunting him throughout, and it was the hundreds of fans that stuck around who jumped into scrums and pelted the Pacers as they left the court. The little push-and-shove match between the players was basically over before a fan went and roused the Zen-like Artest, who was lounging on the scorer's table (which, to be fair, could be construed as either absolute calm or the ultimate insult).
If that beer never finds Artest, we would be celebrating his restraint rather than punishing him with the stiffest NBA suspension ever.
Yes, this was the worst thing to happen to the NBA. It may not have been a Kennedy assassination or a 9/11 in terms of TV shock value, but for the NBA and David Stern, it may as well have been. Like W, Stern has gone ahead and overreacted to a perceived threat to his institution, attacking violence in his sport by scapegoating Artest.
Artest is culpable for the end result, but without Wallace, there is no situation, and without the situation, there is no beer thrower, and without the beer thrower, you do not have Psycho Artest.
Jason Ng '06 is an editor at Post-.
