A Black Eye for the NBA

So who caught the basketball game that broke out during the Pacers/Pistons/Detroit fans brawl on Friday night? That's got to be one of the most embarassing moments in the NBA's history. The good news is that the players involved--Ron Artest, Jermaine O'Neal, Stephen Jackson and Ben Wallace--have all been suspended "indefinitely" for their involvement in the melee. Fan arrests will likely soon follow, as well.

In the last 30 years or so, the NBA has tried to crack down on on-court violence. In fact, the league has changed a lot since the sport's renegade 1970s, where fights were nearly as commonplace on the court as they've always been in hockey. John Feinstein's excellent book, The Punch, details a horrific and historical fight from a 1977 game between the Rockets and Lakers. During the tussle, the Lakers' Kermit Washington landed a sucker punch on Rudy Tomjanovich that nearly killed Rudy T. That fight, and that historic punch, had implications for the NBA--and its stance towards on-court violence--that are still being felt today. It's just one of the reasons you don't see fighting in videogame versions of pro basketball, such as the ESPN NBA or NBA Live series.

This isn't to say there haven't been problems in basketball's recent past--Dennis Rodman kicking sideline photographers comes immediately to mind, for example. The NBA has always liked to think of itself as tough on these types of incidents, however, levying heavy fines for offending teams and players alike. With this most recent incident, and the ugly PR it's generated, the onus is now on the NBA (and teams like the Pistons) to take another look at its policies and security standards, to make sure something like this never happens again.