The NBA - It's Fan-Fight-tastic!

Count me as not surprised that this happened.

There have been so many trends pointing to just this type of riot for the past 15 or so years that anyone who follows the NBA is foolish to be even in the least surprised by what happened. In a manner of speaking the NBA reaped last night what it has been sowing for years.

First - let's start with ticket prices. Long gone are the days where the average Joe-sixpack would have season tickets. Today fans of a team are lucky to see one or two games a year because between the tickets, the parking, the concession food and miscellaneous costs the total is up around a couple hundred dollars to see an NBA game. If a guy brings a date - then he is probably going to be spending about the equivalent of a monthly car payment.

The NBA can't use the threat of pulling season tickets from unruly fans the way the NFL can simply because most fans don't have season tickets.

With the high price of tickets comes a sense of entitlement on the part of the fan. If he shelled out a couple of hundred for a seat - then he gets the feeling that he'll damn well do as he pleases. The cost of bail is less than the cost of a courtside seat - where's the disincentive?

Secondly - look at how the NBA markets its product. It went from "fan-tastic" where the fan was the focal point and fast moving, slick passing action was the product to today where individual players are held up as the reason to attend a game. The NBA doesn't try to sell the idea of come to see the 76ers - they try to sell the idea that the fan should shell out his hard earned money to see AI - the Answer.

The team is secondary to the marketing of the player in the NBA and this leads to a whole series of problems of it's own.

Many players make just as much off shoe sales than their NBA salary, so "street-cred" is all important in making sure the homies want to buy the shoes. The NBA has bred a "disrespect me and I'll pop a cap in your ass" mentality in the players and now the NBA brass will act surprised that something like this happened? That's BS.

When some people speculated that Kobe may have increased his street-cred with his rape charge and an owner like Mark Cuban says that the rape trial may be good for the NBA - then someone in NBA marketing should have had a clue that things were going in the wrong direction.

Speaking of Kobe - could you picture Kevin McHale and Larry Bird acting as childish as Kobe and Shaq? Larry and Kevin didn't get along but it was about TEAM and winning a championship. Today the NBA has bred a "me first" attitude among the players and last night's lack of self-control on all parts is just an off-shoot.

At least last night the players took action into their own hands because there is an NBA reality that is even scarier than what happened last night.

Most of the top players today have hangers-on - a posse. If a fan disrespects their guy, their meal-ticket - then that fan better watch out. Last year in Boston Antwoine Walker's posse almost went after a guy. What would have happened last night if 10 guys from Ron Artests' posse went into the stands to clean house and protect their guy or to exact revenge on behalf of their guy?

How long before some fan gets beat to death in the parking lot because during the game he was booing a particular player and that guy's posse exacted revenge after the game? Sound far fetched? I don't think so.

So I know that we'll be hear a lot of sanctimonious cries of "this is a disgrace" over the next few days but the honest answer is "we should have seen this coming" or "we got what we were asking for".

Looking on the bright side of this - with all the suspensions to the Pacers and Pistons - the Celtics now have a good shot to win the East.