This was in the local Noblesville Daily Times, thought it might get missed by most.
Thanks
MarcD
http://www.noblesvilledailytimes.co...&ArticleID=6540
WEEKLY VIEWPOINT: GREG GARRISON
Who is David Stern and why is he in charge of basketball?
By Greg Garrison
Friday, November 26, 2004
Greg Garrison
Ben Wallace of the Pistons was mad because his team was losing badly at home with less than a minute left to play. Among the world’s best athletes and hyper-focused on the game, he blew up at an easy target and lunged at Ron Artest.
No stranger to such problems, Artest retreated, more to protect his career than to avoid the fight, so Wallace lashed out again, ignoring his teammates’ efforts to stop him. He fired a fast ball that was only a towel, hitting Artest in the face; the victim still retreated.
At this point, the players became spectators, then targets, as the drunken thugs that pass for basketball fans in Detroit took over. Artest lay on the scorers’ table, his old friend and former ABA Pacers’ coach Bobby Leonard admonishing him to avoid further conflict. A hand on the player’s shoulder, he urged, “Just go on down to the end of the bench, Ronnie, just go on down.” And it might have worked but for the airborne tumbler of beer heaved at the player’s chest by one of Detroit’s finest. School was out. The brawl was on, the foul and the end of the game now gone from sight.
Enter one of the more clueless individuals in American sports, NBA Commissioner David Stern. His intonations of inane excuses, full of meaningless drivel, confessed for him.
Others have opined about the commissioner’s slavish devotion to the continued “marketing” of the NBA, and never was it more evident than when he decided to sacrifice the small market threat; an arena laden with drunken slobs with a well-deserved reputation for felonious misconduct presented no problem for the Commish. Just blow up the Pacers and drone a lugubrious Lachrymose about player discipline, then pick a convenient and perfectly expendable MVP from Indiana to hurl on the funeral pyre of civility.
So a hundred or so dirt-bag fans succeeded in a feat their team could not accomplish. They drowned their only competition in a sea of beer and ill will and presented the Pistons with a free ride to the NBA finals.
And for all that, Big Ben was suspended for six games. Forgive the conclusory observation, but only a supremely clueless white guy could have done it.
Artest is gone for the year (his record of prior misconduct depriving him of protest, notwithstanding a season marked by exactly one flagrant foul call), the Pacers’ center, O’Neal is out for 25 games, and the blameless fans from Indianapolis have watched their counterparts in Detroit wipe out their team. Oops, sorry: Indianapolis fans have no counterpart among the refuse of the Midwest’s violent crime capital.
If some arbiter without a dog in the fight were to examine these facts and apply equity, several options would at once appear.
* First, the Detroit franchise which owns and operates the facility would be fined a million dollars for being too cheap and too slothful to have bothered with reasonable security at that drunk-infested venue.
* Next, as it was the fans who hurled the whole event into the sewer, the dispassionate fair-minded judge would simply declare the forfeiture of at least two home games against the Pistons, one of which would have to be the next game against the Pacers. Every fan would suffer for the sins of the few vermin; the gate, the concessions, the memorabilia merchants, would share equally in a couple of well-earned evenings of darkness, and the franchise would at least be deprived of the unjust enrichment offered by that gaggle of punks who pass for fans in Detroit.
* Next, Reggie Miller would get the NBA version of a Silver Star instead of a suspension for risking life and limb (not to mention a very nice suit) to pull his people out of the inferno.
* Finally, Stern would reduce Jermaine O'Neal’s suspension to zero games, as his blows were struck in defense of self and teammates on the playing surface, where no fan had a right to be and therefore, to form or maintain any expectation of safety from dire consequence.
Such a fact-finder/judge would supplant Stern’s cluelessness with a prospective admonition on the subject of fans on the floor. “Henceforth and forevermore, the basketball floor will be the exclusive domain of the players, coaches, officials and those they specifically permit to enter there. Any fan who steps on that floor without such an appropriate invitation immediately assumes all risks associated with such unauthorized entry. Any player accosted by such fan or fans will be specifically authorized to respond to their presence as he shall deem reasonable.”
Even Detroit fans would get that one.
Greg Garrison of rural Hamilton County is a partner in Garrison & Kiefer and host of Garrison on WIBC. Write him at and check out Greggarrison.com.
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Thanks
MarcD
http://www.noblesvilledailytimes.co...&ArticleID=6540
WEEKLY VIEWPOINT: GREG GARRISON
Who is David Stern and why is he in charge of basketball?
By Greg Garrison
Friday, November 26, 2004
Greg Garrison
Ben Wallace of the Pistons was mad because his team was losing badly at home with less than a minute left to play. Among the world’s best athletes and hyper-focused on the game, he blew up at an easy target and lunged at Ron Artest.
No stranger to such problems, Artest retreated, more to protect his career than to avoid the fight, so Wallace lashed out again, ignoring his teammates’ efforts to stop him. He fired a fast ball that was only a towel, hitting Artest in the face; the victim still retreated.
At this point, the players became spectators, then targets, as the drunken thugs that pass for basketball fans in Detroit took over. Artest lay on the scorers’ table, his old friend and former ABA Pacers’ coach Bobby Leonard admonishing him to avoid further conflict. A hand on the player’s shoulder, he urged, “Just go on down to the end of the bench, Ronnie, just go on down.” And it might have worked but for the airborne tumbler of beer heaved at the player’s chest by one of Detroit’s finest. School was out. The brawl was on, the foul and the end of the game now gone from sight.
Enter one of the more clueless individuals in American sports, NBA Commissioner David Stern. His intonations of inane excuses, full of meaningless drivel, confessed for him.
Others have opined about the commissioner’s slavish devotion to the continued “marketing” of the NBA, and never was it more evident than when he decided to sacrifice the small market threat; an arena laden with drunken slobs with a well-deserved reputation for felonious misconduct presented no problem for the Commish. Just blow up the Pacers and drone a lugubrious Lachrymose about player discipline, then pick a convenient and perfectly expendable MVP from Indiana to hurl on the funeral pyre of civility.
So a hundred or so dirt-bag fans succeeded in a feat their team could not accomplish. They drowned their only competition in a sea of beer and ill will and presented the Pistons with a free ride to the NBA finals.
And for all that, Big Ben was suspended for six games. Forgive the conclusory observation, but only a supremely clueless white guy could have done it.
Artest is gone for the year (his record of prior misconduct depriving him of protest, notwithstanding a season marked by exactly one flagrant foul call), the Pacers’ center, O’Neal is out for 25 games, and the blameless fans from Indianapolis have watched their counterparts in Detroit wipe out their team. Oops, sorry: Indianapolis fans have no counterpart among the refuse of the Midwest’s violent crime capital.
If some arbiter without a dog in the fight were to examine these facts and apply equity, several options would at once appear.
* First, the Detroit franchise which owns and operates the facility would be fined a million dollars for being too cheap and too slothful to have bothered with reasonable security at that drunk-infested venue.
* Next, as it was the fans who hurled the whole event into the sewer, the dispassionate fair-minded judge would simply declare the forfeiture of at least two home games against the Pistons, one of which would have to be the next game against the Pacers. Every fan would suffer for the sins of the few vermin; the gate, the concessions, the memorabilia merchants, would share equally in a couple of well-earned evenings of darkness, and the franchise would at least be deprived of the unjust enrichment offered by that gaggle of punks who pass for fans in Detroit.
* Next, Reggie Miller would get the NBA version of a Silver Star instead of a suspension for risking life and limb (not to mention a very nice suit) to pull his people out of the inferno.
* Finally, Stern would reduce Jermaine O'Neal’s suspension to zero games, as his blows were struck in defense of self and teammates on the playing surface, where no fan had a right to be and therefore, to form or maintain any expectation of safety from dire consequence.
Such a fact-finder/judge would supplant Stern’s cluelessness with a prospective admonition on the subject of fans on the floor. “Henceforth and forevermore, the basketball floor will be the exclusive domain of the players, coaches, officials and those they specifically permit to enter there. Any fan who steps on that floor without such an appropriate invitation immediately assumes all risks associated with such unauthorized entry. Any player accosted by such fan or fans will be specifically authorized to respond to their presence as he shall deem reasonable.”
Even Detroit fans would get that one.
Greg Garrison of rural Hamilton County is a partner in Garrison & Kiefer and host of Garrison on WIBC. Write him at and check out Greggarrison.com.
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