I have “basketbrawl” issues for precisely that reason, and I’m relieved to see someone else voicing it. Admittedly: in the end I just have a leftover childish conviction that sports fans are very often dicks, and some small part of me enjoys seeing the worst ones get punched. But this whole thing exposes the wrongness of a crowd paying black men to perform a spectacle and then treating them with all the respect offered to animals, from the first things thrown to the gleeful dumping of beer over Artest’s head as he was led off. Really: if someone came into David Stern’s office and threw shit at him while he was working, the reactions and results would play quite differently. And the sight of at least one fan happily stepping out onto the court and taunting a player—visibly asking for a fight, clearly wanting it—is a lot more disgusting to me than the idea that a person having shit thrown at him might possibly take off after the folks doing the throwing.
All this is above and beyond, of course, the normal caveat that no, nobody should hit anybody, blah blah blah, players get paid to work under pressure and should control themselves, blah blah blah, but still. More moral outrage is being directed toward players (who basically gave certain fans what they were looking for) than toward a big brewing bag-of-dicks of fans and people who are meant to be controlling them.

nitsuh on ilx today, wrt to the detroit pistons...still the best news footage of the year.