Artest is out for the year. Stephen Jacson for 30 games. Jermaine O’Neal for 25. Ben Wallace got a six-game suspension.

My initial reaction is that all of the penalties are way, way too severe. Tony Kornhiser said this morning that the intent of the suspensions was not necessarily to make them proportional to the harm done, but to prevent something similar from happening again.

I suppose that’s understandable, but I really have little doubt that something similar will happen again. It’s just the nature of the dynamic of sports. Sports are by nature confrontational. They’re violent. The SportsCenter highlight reals are always about the biggest hits and the most aggressive dunks or shot blocks. The Big Four are increasingly encouraging fans to believe they’re part of the team (”you’re the sixth man!”). And there are the inevitable class issues I wrote a bit about yesterday.

At any rate, I think the suspensions were not only unreasonable, they were disproportional. Artest was responding to a provocation. Arguably even defending himself. Certianly, he should have been punished, but I don’t see how what he did was more than twice as bad as what Stephen Jackson did, which was to use the opportunity to run into the crowd not to defend his teammate by breaking things up (as Fred Jones did), but by swinging wildly at anyone within ten feet of him. Jackson should have gotten the worst punishment. Then Artest.

I think Jermaine O’Neal should have recieved a far less proportional suspension, too. O’Neal’s most egregious offense was to punch a fan who (a) was on the court, where he doesn’t belong, in the midst of a brawl, and (b) according to reports had just seconds earlier attacked Artest, an altercation the cameras didn’t pick up. Frankly, I’m not sure O’Neal should have been suspended at all. If a fan’s on the court, is coming at you, and just attacked one of your teammates, I think you’ve got no choice but to deck him.

I also think Ben Wallace’s six games was excessive. He never even went into the crowd. He did attack Artest, and refused to leave the court after being ejected. He also tossed a towel. Were it not for the ensuing melee, he’d likely have gotten one or two games at most.

The worst thing about all of this is that the thuggish Detroit fans got rewarded for their hooliganism. The Pacers will play nearly half the season without their three top scorers, and the entire season without their top defender. The Pistons weren’t punished at all for the awful security.

The unmistakable message to Detroit fans:

Act like idiots, attack opponents, brawl, if need be — and we’ll reward you by taking your biggest rival in the conference completely out of contention.

Is my bias showing?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 22nd, 2004 at 12:50 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.