OT: Netflix doc on Malice at the Palace arrives August 10th
WORLD PEACE
That is very Metta of you.
'METTA'
Anyway, I hope they do a companion 30/30 where half the Boston Bruins hockey team climbs over into the stands to fight the fans.
One guy even takes a shoe off a fan and starts beating him with it. Much more glorious than malice at the palce IMO
A whole documentary on it? I mean, it was a big fight, but jeez...
You don't think there's a couple hours worth of nuance there to pick apart, especially from those "thugs" and how we now better realize how spoiled and entitled "fans" truly are?!
I’m not sure I follow your point here. One fan threw a cup, which was bad, sure, but that didn’t justify Artest running into the stands (and fighting the wrong guy!).
There’s an understanding that players and fans can never put each other in danger. If that understanding goes out the window, well, forget about selling courtside tickets.
Stadium security is there for a reason. If Artest had just kept his head and asked Palace security to find/eject the fan, there was a real chance the Pacers would go on to win the 2005 NBA title.
Hopefully it's a 30-45 min documentary, that would be perfect. Either way I'm in 100% for this.
While that was a major moment in NBA history, and cultural history, it seems too long ago to matter. I suppose part of the documentary will be addressing that issue, explaining why it's been made now.
[EDIT]: Plus what B-Nut-GoBlue wrote.
At the time of the event, it sure seemed like a 9.0 earthquake and an event that would resonate for years.
At a 15-year distance, I don't believe that anymore. Ultimately, it was just a couple morons (Artest and Jackson) who were uniquely dumb-headed that were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It could have happened anywhere or anytime prior ---- for instance, the 1990 Palace Brawl with the Sixers that accidentally spilled into the courtside stands had MUCH more opportunity to go completely off the rails --- but it didn't happen anywhere or anytime prior to November 2005.
And after it did happen, it likely won't happen again.
The Sixers fight was mainly on the court, just at the edge of the first row of floor seats. None of those fans would have been dumb enough to challenge Barkley or Rick Mahorn.
No spoilers, please!
Turns out that Darth Vader is Luke’s father.
True story, I was 16 rows up and left with 2 minutes to go to beat traffic....Turned on the radio in the car to hear "Artest is in the stands!".
That's almost my exact experience also. We snuck out a few minutes early to beat traffic and then were shocked by what unfolded next.
I'm curious to watch but I'm not expecting this to be an accurate recollection of events. It was a totally normal crowd, not some bloodthirsty mob. A few jackasses (severely) crossed the line after the on court altercation but this was almost exclusively driven by the actions of Artest, Jackson and O'Neal. Pacer's deserve everything that happened to them in terms of suspensions and prosecutions.
Based on how the media has tried to portray Simone Biles as courageous for withdrawing from Olympics and quitting on her team - betting that Ron Artest will be positioned as a misunderstood humanitarian who should be considered a hero for confronting Pistons fans and climbing into the stands to "protect" himself and his team.
Should be interesting to watch, anyways...
lol, what a weird parallel to attempt to draw.
Working pretty hard to get his Biles opinion on here.
Wow, what a dumb hawt take. Are you Charlie Kirk?
The way I've read promo material for this series, it tells these stories through a single person's eyes/lens. Christy Martin's story. Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner's story. Malice is through Ron/Metta's eyes. Also seemingly confirmed by the trailer where he says "I want the story out there. Go frame by frame."
All of that to say, I'm not sure I'm as excited about the Malice at the Palace: Pacers edition. The three people they show clips of in the trailer are Metta, Jermaine O'Neal and Stephen Jackson.
I could be wrong, but this seems like we might be in for documentary themes like: that was "our" championship they won, Reggie's last good shot, the unruly fans generation, Turtle from Entourage, Detroit is terrible, etc.
It looks like that's the case, and if so, Netflix/Artest/the Pacers can go fuck themselves.
Leaving the rest of the world aside (e.g., European and South American soccer fans can get really crazy), there are--unfortunately--numerous incidents every dang year in the U.S. where "fans" decide to get their beer muscles on and throw and/or spit things at players: water bottles, beer cups, batteries, balls, etc. All those "fans" are abhorrent and should be banned for life from those locations and arrested if a law has been violated.
What differentiates the Malice at the Palace is that Ron Artest (immediately followed by a completely out of control Stephen Jackson) decided to go into the stands when it happened to him. He's not special. He doesn't get to decide it's OK to violate the strict rule of players *never* going into the stands to "take care" of things.
If a "fan" decides to do something stupid, it's understandable to be pissed off, but point him out to security and let them handle it. That way, you don't cause a full-on melee, especially when you start assaulting a person who didn't actually throw the cup (though I know Artest now claims that other guy bet John Green to throw the cup--as if that excuses Green, who last I looked was not a 13-year old boy who would jump off a bridge if his friends told him to).
The Pacers deserved every one of those suspensions, and deserved to have their promising season tanked because of it.
I find it funny a bunch of people are saying “Pacers” as if the whole team was in the stands. The majority was on the court trying to defend themselves.
And the idiots saying it was just a few fans need to go back & watch all the video of hundreds of fans throwing stuff at Pacers who were just standing at their bench trying to cover up. Reggie Miller was one of them, who was not playing that night, who has personal security who recorded the whole thing next to him & literally hundreds of fans just in that corner were throwing things at them & about a dozen came down to the bench just in front of them.
So once it kicked off, the fans weren’t innocent bystanders.
So once it kicked off
Yeah, that's the problem. It got "kicked off" by Artest and Jackson storming the stands. That should have never have happened; that's the red line and there's no excuse for it. I am not here for what looks to be a sob story about how the Pacers were done wrong because of a massive brawl that two of their players decided to start.
Some idiot lobbing a plastic cup or whatever is bad, but not that unusual in sports and is easily handled by stadium personnel; the jerk can be pointed out and led out of the stadium to waiting police. Instead, two players decided that's not enough and climbed over seats to start punching & grabbing fans and that kicks off exactly what happened -- a massive fight where now hundreds of people decide all bets are off and act like fools.
I find it funny a bunch of people are saying “Pacers” as if the whole team was in the stands. The majority was on the court trying to defend themselves.
I'm just guessing here, and forgive me if I've gone afoul, but you're a Pacers fan?
When you say "a bunch of people are saying "Pacers"" with regards to the Malice, you're talking about likely everyone on the planet outside of a 50 mile radius of St. Elmos in downtown Indy. And why do we all say Pacers? Because three of the nine active Pacers (or 12 total Pacers) who played the Pistons were involved in one of the biggest fan/player altercations in the modern history of sport.
No one says "Pacers" because we think it's the WHOLE team, there's video. We saw it. We say "Pacers" because they were ON the Pacers.
I'm pretty sure this is only hard for fans of one team to understand.
Yeah, I was excited at first, but more indifferent now that I know these two Jackasses hold the narrative.
Ron Artest and Metta World Peace are the same person (at least, most of the time).
I was there and Stephen Jackson was acting like a complete buffoon. Way worse behavior than Artest.
Jackson was always an ass. I had a run-in with him and one of his buddies at the Indy airport at the wetzel pretzel stand. Nobody in Indy likes him either.
It was the first Pistons game I ever attended. My search for that ticket stub continues to this day. I know I have it somewhere.
Oh, the glory of having those incredibly obnoxious, loud-mouthed Pacers fans sitting next to us realize with horror what was about to happen to the rest of their season. It was all worth it just for that.
I’ve heard one of his teammates, Jackson maybe, discuss this on a podcast. When they finally got back to the locker room and it’s settled down a bit and there was a moment of quiet, Artest asks, “Do you think we’re going to get in trouble?”.
Yeah, I think it was Jackson. Pretty sure his response to Artest was something like "Are you fucking serious?"
I think more than enough has been said about this event. Honestly, this is just content for the sake of content in an age where there's 400 different outlets all looking for it.
Think I prefer Bomani Jones' recap
You Can Fight If The Sport Is..."Right"; Bomani & Jones, episode 64 - YouTube
Should be interesting
I hope they interweave a bit of Daniel Tosh through the documentary. His standup about Artest and the NBA - 'if you could promise me every game would end like that, I'd be a season ticket holder...' that would make it more watchable, I think.https://open.spotify.com/track/6thYFdbWJ1qbzXBFkCWe1W?si=6b56e8b35ba74727
This was the night before I attended my first pro basketball game, and I was so excited after reading about what happened the previous night in the morning’s paper.
While the evening’s Grizzlies/Spurs game was indeed wild, I was very disappointed that it wasn’t as crazy as the Pistons/Pacers game the previous night.
The Pistons' version of "The Last Dance"
I've got a somewhat "Cool Story Bro" related to the Malice at the Palace.
I was out of town about fifteen years ago and a skylight in our previous home sprung a leak. My wife picked up the Detroit Jewish News to find someone (people in there were typically reputable - this was before the era of apps like Next Door or before Facebook where you could get recommendations).
She saw an ad for a "J.F. Green." She called him and he was able to come right out...and he fixed the problem.
As everyone knows, it's difficult to get people to come out to fix things...and to fix them correctly. So, we used him for a few other projects. Prices were high...and he was a bit difficult to deal with...but he showed up and did the work.
We ended up recommending him to someone. They call us up and say, "Did you know that the guy you recommended to us is John Green from the Malice at the Palace?!?"
Needless to say, we never used him again.
By the way, I was watching that game live and couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was insane.
Even cooler story?
John Green from Mental Floss is from Indiana.
Consider your mind blown.
Obligatory Bill Burr take on it
As a Pacer fan not really into the NBA any longer, this was a big contributing factor to me becoming disinterested in the league. That was a Pacer and Piston team that were both really really good, and probably poised to meet in the eastern finals that year, and it all blew up because of idiots like Ron Artest and Uber-idiot, Stephen Jackson.
I was on the floor running a handheld camera for channel 50 or 20 whatever we were on that year. I was by the Pistons bench under the basket. It was crazy. When the game was over and we ended the broadcast, I went to the tv truck to put my camera away. We were locked out of the building until the Pacers left. The police were looking at footage in the truck of all the cameras angles. There were 3 shows that night, ESPN, the home and visit show. Probably 25 cameras. I am surprised that the NBA let them use the footage for the doc. Rules were made after that night, that no handheld camera could go on to the floor if a fight broke out. We all went out on that floor that night and it was crazy, Ben Wallace’s brother came down from the top of the lower bowl to fight and protect Ben when the players went in to the stands. World wide Wes was trying to drag pacer players off the floor to the locker room. After we struck and packed up the tv truck it was about 3am when we left to go home. Craziest night of my career.
It was a mess but to this day I am still outraged by Tim Legler and Jim Gray piling on the city of Detroit. They can both go fuck themselves. Seriously. Fuck those guys.
I will admit that I have a rather unpopular opinion on this. Artest may have been playing somewhat dirty, but I think it is entirely reasonable to lose composure and attack a fan. Yeah, he picked the wrong one. But we ask far too much of our athletes that they maintain composure when having abuse hurled at them. Frankly, I wasn't that upset about OSU's Marcus Hall flipping off the Michigan crowd. I hate OSU more than anyone, but he'd just been in a fight and was getting abuse hurled at him. Flipping off A2 is no big deal. It would be best for athletes to not do this stuff, but if I were in their shoes I'd find it hard not to respond.
Anyway, for those interested, here is a damn good long form article on Malice at the Palace with a lot of first-hand accounts: https://grantland.com/features/an-oral-history-malice-palace/
We gonna pass up two hand shoves face to face from Ben Wallace? I wonder if Ben threw an empty solo cup at him? Would he start throwing roundhouse punches at him?
From a 1000 feet up just look at what happens. Ben Wallace straight two hand shoves Ron Artest, challenging him and calling him out. To that Artest backs down and tries to be an antagonist. A fan throws an empty (by the time it reaches him) solo cup. At this Artest can not control himself and must destroy the fan responsible. I dont know but if someone wants to defend Artest its going to be a tough sell for me. He shouldve stood up, pointed him out, and have him removed. Ben said im here lets go but Ron was like naw there is a 190 pound guy in the stands im gonna go after soon.
Wait, how did Artest try to be the antagonist by backing down from Wallace going after him? I'm not talking about what happened after that with the cup throw, rushing stands, etc. But this all started with Wallace going crazy after a common, albeit hard, foul.
I just re-watched the live footage. It is a lot worse than I remember. A couple things:
1 - The criminal charges should've been harsher and highlighted more significantly. I actually didn't even know that Artest, Jackson, and O'Neal were charged. Their penalties for pleading no contest were a little bit of community service time (which they already do as part of their professional contractual obligations) and a $250 fine. What an absolute joke.
2 - I can't believe Artest & Co. were not disciplined more harshly by the NBA. In retrospect, I think Artest learned and bettered himself from the situation, and that's great. But I am genuinely surprised that a short suspension was all he received. If an incident like that happened today I would expect to see devastating consequences to the player's career--if not a permanent ban, at least a very, very long suspension.
3 - A lot of the fans truly acted despicably. Watching the Pacers players and staff get pelted with flying objects, liquid dumped all over them, and popcorn and other food thrown at them while they were trying to get away from the situation and out of the stadium . . . it is just really hard to understand what possessed so many people to act like this. An interesting case study for social psychologists, I bet.
4 - If this happened in a place like New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, you know damn well the narrative would be something like "DON'T MESS WITH NEW YORK," "New York doesn't take shit!" New York against the world," and so on. Hell, Artest is probably lucky that he got involved in something like this in Detroit and not Philly. But of course about half of NBA fans pegged the blame for the incident squarely on Detroiters, and I'm sure this documentary is going to do its best to paint Artest & Co. as innocent victims defending themselves from a violent mob.
I really hope this documentary focuses on the Ron Artest redemption and personal growth arc and is not one of those presentations where "if you totally omit half of the facts and then look at the remaining facts in a light most favorable to me, then I don't look like such a bad guy!"