I must have watched the replays of the pacers/pistons fight a dozen times at the bar last night (on mute). While I strongly believe the Pacers were in the "right" as much as anyone can be who's involved in a fight, i was expecting the media reaction to be "there goes artest again". Well, much to my relief, the espn crew (i don't know their trademarked name, but the one with steve s. smith), were all in agreement....the fans were the ones out of line.

I'm not sure what the proper reaction is to having a beer/cup/bottle thrown in your face. I don't think i would react by punching the person, but i do know that i'm on the far end of the spectrum. I would expect that the vast majority of people, if that was done on the street, would react the same way Artest did.

The only question, then, becomes whether as a professional athlete, his actions must be judged at a higher standard. I don't think that they do. There's a line when it comes to fans vs. players. As an avid heckler, I DO think it's apart of the game. I know announcers discredit this theory, but i DO think that buying a ticket entitles me to certain liberties at the expense of the players. If all i cared about was watching the game, i could do that at home (for free). When you are in the arena/stadium, you are apart of the game. There's a level of interaction and participation there that warrants some level of heckling.

But here is where the line is drawn: No swearing, no personal references (there are exception to that limitation), and CLEARLY nothing physical.

These athletes are huge celebrities. In what other area of entertainment can you get that close to a celebrity? They allow themselves to be vulnerable to thousands of fanatic, sometimes drunken, fans. At any moment, they can be attacked. And somehow, we ask them to forget about all that and entertain us for 3 hours a night.

If and when a fan crosses a line, the player has the absolute right to defend themselves. And not just on the immediate/direct level. If artest doesn't defend himself against that one detroit fan, perhaps other fans in other arenas will take that as a cue to push the envelope even more.

Security should have done a better job to stop the situation immediately. Artest lacked faith in the security and took it upon himself. Of course there were numerous consequences of going into the stands that Artest didn't account for. And yes, he probably made the situation worse in the immediate (can i end that part of the sentence w/ that word? i can't think of what should follow immediate), but I still don't blame him.

He did what he believed what was right, he did what many others in his situation would do, and most importantly, i think that his actions will have a long term benefit on his, and his peers, safety.

Oh, and detroit is off the list of possible places for our new capital. They deserve their reputation.

- I also didn't like the piston's CEO sayign it all started b/c artest was laying on the table and thus didn't keep the table as a barrior between him in the fans. Like a bottle wouldn't be able to cross that imaginary line.

- I'm officially a pacers fan after this. I can't believe i rooted for the pistons last year.