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Mark Kreidler: Up close - and vulnerable
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, November 20, 2004
Look, they're close. That's what they are. They are so close that they can walk right up and shake the head coach by the shoulders, with virtually nobody around to stop them.
And the Kings' Rick Adelman ought to know, because it has happened to him more than once - right there in good ol' friendly confines of Arco Arena.
"I remember when we were going through some hard stretches, and a couple of times some fans came up behind me and shook me by the shoulders while they were yelling something," Adelman said. "Thank goodness they were only yelling. You know?"
It was late Friday night by now. You could still hear the echoes of a raucous Arco crowd that had gotten what it had come for, a pulsating 107-105 victory over a game Memphis squad that nearly won this thing after being 16 points down in the first half.
Chris Webber had taken a page from his playbook of two or three years ago, dropping 31 points on the Grizzlies and grabbing 12 rebounds and just generally being huge down the stretch. Peja Stojakovic had come up with a key three-pointer. Doug Christie had been critical early and late.
It was, to swipe the phrase, good times. Which made it all the stranger that what everybody wanted to talk about afterward was the riot in Detroit.
As Adelman watched the videotape of Indiana forward Ron Artest bolting into the stands, the scene dissolving from an on-court scrape to the full-scale melee it became, the coach's face registered the same emotions of shock and revulsion that most sane people will track if and when they see the video for themselves.
But in the next breath, Adelman acknowledged the obvious: Sports pretty much exists one step removed from this kind of stuff all the time. The magic in the thing is that it doesn't happen more often.
Oh, not to the extreme of Detroit on Friday. Certainly not. What went down at the Palace of Auburn Hills may be remembered as the ugliest incident in modern NBA history. Fans were completely out of control.
Players, Artest first among them, made the majestically wrongheaded decision to respond in kind.
Once one side starts seeing how low it can stoop beneath the other side's behavior, you're on an epically hideous track. Require no further proof than the Detroit videotape of the following: Stoopid is as stoopid does.
But you don't have to go that far, of course. The Arco fans have been acknowledged often as the best in the NBA; they practically wear it like a charm bracelet. That didn't stop the strangers from coming up behind Adelman - the coach says he never saw anyone coming in any of the cases - and grabbing his shoulders before he knew what was happening.
That didn't stop the glow-sticks from raining down on the Arco floor last May, not long after the Anthony Peeler-Kevin Garnett fisticuffs that got Peeler ejected from the Kings-Minnesota playoff series.
Remember Adelman, in that scene, raising his hands to the crowd, trying in vain to restore some semblance of order?
It was not unlike Detroit's Larry Brown grabbing the microphone on Friday night, thinking maybe he could talk some sense into somebody. Things were just too far gone. The momentum had already done its building.
And the fans are close. Understand that reality. The fans are close in golf, and they're close in tennis, and around the NBA there are franchises that seem to be setting new records daily for how few inches from the playing court their highest-paying fans can be positioned in their seats.
How close? Close enough that a disoriented Calvin Klein could stand up during a timeout at Madison Square Garden two seasons ago and begin chatting up then-Knicks guard Latrell Sprewell, who was waiting to inbound a ball.
Sprewell had no idea what was going on. It seemed kind of funny at the time, because everyone figured Calvin Klein wasn't maybe the world's most heinous threat to the safety and welfare of an NBA player.
Close enough that, when Chris Webber and I discussed the subject a few days after the Klein incident, Webber said very frankly, "I think it's safe to say that every athlete fears the worst."
"I always go back to the Monica Seles thing," Adelman said late Friday evening, referring to the tennis star's stabbing by a deranged German fan during a changeover at a match. "She's just sitting there, and he comes up behind, and boom."
Adelman spoke those words only after thoroughly excoriating the likes of Artest and Indiana teammate Stephen Jackson for their inexcusable behavior, which is just another way of saying that violence in the sporting arena is hardly one-sided. There's a hair-trigger mentality out there, and maybe we're finding out that it's the same on both sides of the bench. And they're all close.
Mark Kreidler: Up close - and vulnerable
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, November 20, 2004
Look, they're close. That's what they are. They are so close that they can walk right up and shake the head coach by the shoulders, with virtually nobody around to stop them.
And the Kings' Rick Adelman ought to know, because it has happened to him more than once - right there in good ol' friendly confines of Arco Arena.
"I remember when we were going through some hard stretches, and a couple of times some fans came up behind me and shook me by the shoulders while they were yelling something," Adelman said. "Thank goodness they were only yelling. You know?"
It was late Friday night by now. You could still hear the echoes of a raucous Arco crowd that had gotten what it had come for, a pulsating 107-105 victory over a game Memphis squad that nearly won this thing after being 16 points down in the first half.
Chris Webber had taken a page from his playbook of two or three years ago, dropping 31 points on the Grizzlies and grabbing 12 rebounds and just generally being huge down the stretch. Peja Stojakovic had come up with a key three-pointer. Doug Christie had been critical early and late.
It was, to swipe the phrase, good times. Which made it all the stranger that what everybody wanted to talk about afterward was the riot in Detroit.
As Adelman watched the videotape of Indiana forward Ron Artest bolting into the stands, the scene dissolving from an on-court scrape to the full-scale melee it became, the coach's face registered the same emotions of shock and revulsion that most sane people will track if and when they see the video for themselves.
But in the next breath, Adelman acknowledged the obvious: Sports pretty much exists one step removed from this kind of stuff all the time. The magic in the thing is that it doesn't happen more often.
Oh, not to the extreme of Detroit on Friday. Certainly not. What went down at the Palace of Auburn Hills may be remembered as the ugliest incident in modern NBA history. Fans were completely out of control.
Players, Artest first among them, made the majestically wrongheaded decision to respond in kind.
Once one side starts seeing how low it can stoop beneath the other side's behavior, you're on an epically hideous track. Require no further proof than the Detroit videotape of the following: Stoopid is as stoopid does.
But you don't have to go that far, of course. The Arco fans have been acknowledged often as the best in the NBA; they practically wear it like a charm bracelet. That didn't stop the strangers from coming up behind Adelman - the coach says he never saw anyone coming in any of the cases - and grabbing his shoulders before he knew what was happening.
That didn't stop the glow-sticks from raining down on the Arco floor last May, not long after the Anthony Peeler-Kevin Garnett fisticuffs that got Peeler ejected from the Kings-Minnesota playoff series.
Remember Adelman, in that scene, raising his hands to the crowd, trying in vain to restore some semblance of order?
It was not unlike Detroit's Larry Brown grabbing the microphone on Friday night, thinking maybe he could talk some sense into somebody. Things were just too far gone. The momentum had already done its building.
And the fans are close. Understand that reality. The fans are close in golf, and they're close in tennis, and around the NBA there are franchises that seem to be setting new records daily for how few inches from the playing court their highest-paying fans can be positioned in their seats.
How close? Close enough that a disoriented Calvin Klein could stand up during a timeout at Madison Square Garden two seasons ago and begin chatting up then-Knicks guard Latrell Sprewell, who was waiting to inbound a ball.
Sprewell had no idea what was going on. It seemed kind of funny at the time, because everyone figured Calvin Klein wasn't maybe the world's most heinous threat to the safety and welfare of an NBA player.
Close enough that, when Chris Webber and I discussed the subject a few days after the Klein incident, Webber said very frankly, "I think it's safe to say that every athlete fears the worst."
"I always go back to the Monica Seles thing," Adelman said late Friday evening, referring to the tennis star's stabbing by a deranged German fan during a changeover at a match. "She's just sitting there, and he comes up behind, and boom."
Adelman spoke those words only after thoroughly excoriating the likes of Artest and Indiana teammate Stephen Jackson for their inexcusable behavior, which is just another way of saying that violence in the sporting arena is hardly one-sided. There's a hair-trigger mentality out there, and maybe we're finding out that it's the same on both sides of the bench. And they're all close.
