Bill Simmons on the Malice at the Palace

Good piece from Bill "the Sports Guy" Simmons - money quote:

Look, I'm not comfortable with what happened, but I'm a realist. The NBA has been straddling this line for years: crazy players, boozed-up crowds, everyone on top of one another. Throw in a sense of entitlement for some fans -- they take escalating ticket prices and mind-boggling salaries as a free pass to belittle players -- and this was inevitable. If the league truly wants to prevent riots, why does it sell beer after halftime? Why let drunken troublemakers sneak down into premium seats? Why aren't policemen protecting the visitors bench? If they don't change the rules after this, forget $5 lottery tickets; you're better off buying $125 tickets to an NBA game, getting bombed and baiting opposing players into a lawsuit.

Hmmm... sounds similar to what I wrote a couple days ago.

The only thing I would disagree on is Simmon's Top 5 Jaw dropping TV nights. The morning of Sept. 11th and the Challenger disaster have to be mentioned (even if they didn't happen at night and were a reality all of their own - I know that it is completely different but it still should have been mentioned just out of respect).

More notes on the melee from Simmons. I found this nugget particularly interesting:

Intriguing note on Wallace: One of his posse members was the huge guy who attacked Fred Jones from behind. During the initial altercation, you can see the guy lurking behind Artest as Artest lies on the scorer's table, almost like he's ready to jump him. You can also see him consoling Wallace's kids after the fact.

I've been writing about player's posses for some time and am not surprised in the least. The NBA is going to have to address posses at some point.

Again I have one point of contention with Simmons. He lists potential teams interested in trading for Artest and says this about the Celtics:

Boston -- Artest and a No. 1 for Jiri Welsch and Yogi Stewart. Unfortunately, the local media would skewer the Celtics for this one ... so it's not happening. Red Auerbach would have made this trade though. He's the same guy who traded for Kermit Washington 27 years ago.

Simmons knows that was a completely different situation and that Washington had always been a solid NBA citizen except for that one incident. Complete cheap shot on Red and Kermit by Simmons.

On a separate note - this is what Simmons used to be like back when he was The Boston Sportguy. Top notch and we used to get stuff like this almost every day.