Last night, Anna and I went out to dinner to celebrate receiving a job offer for next year. I saw images of the Pacers-Pistons game flashing across a television noting how the game had been called due to fighting. I was shocked. Fighting? What was going on the west side of Lake Erie?

When we returned home eager to watch Sports Center, even Anna was interested in what happened. I was appalled by what happened on the court. I think I was even more appalled by ESPN’s Shoot Around team. This collection of former players essentially defended what the Pacers did. They said they were not making excuses for the players but they made every opportunity to blame everything on the fans and protect their NBA buddies. It was a sick situation.

Most of the analyst kept repeating how a person has the right to defend himself and to retaliate yet. Tim Legler, of ESPN, goes as far as saying the fans on the floor deserved the haymakers thrown at them. Apparently for Legler, the sucker punch thrown by Jermaine O’Neil was well deserved. What would have happened if the guy was knocked out and died? Legler would say “Hey the guy was on the floor, that is a no-no. He deserved to die.” It was apparent that these guys were already trying to run damage control for a sport they loved, they were protecting their buddies.

I don’t pardon the fans for their rude and intolerable behavior, but I do blame the players. NBA players are paid millions of dollars and they apparently need it all to feed their families. This is not the first time that a player has had beer thrown on them. This is not the first time a player has been heckled. However, the players did break the cardinal rule this time, they crossed the line. They went up into the stands to beat down the fans. Player apologetics would suggest that Stephen Jackson and the other players that followed did so in self defense. I forgot how hard it is for a 6-11, 242 pound man to defend themselves when they go to attack people. The whole act was classless, disgusting, and pitiful.

The worst is yet to come. Saturday morning, I went to play basketball with some college friends. A friend of mine told me, “That was awesome!” I was shocked. Appalling was more like it. This is the legacy of this incident. Kids around the world are going to believe you are entitled to wail on hecklers in the stands. The NBA apologists have done at great job defending the Mosaic eye for an eye concept. Instead of being the bigger man and walking away from an altercation, kids are going to have the impression that defense to rowdy fans is to go up into the stands and beat the lights out of them. There will be repercussions for this incident far beyond the suspensions, criminal charges, and lawsuits that will be filed in the next few months. We will mostly never hear of those repercussions, but their occurrence is assured.

– Bob