IndyGopher said:
If he threw the only beer he had at you, he's now unarmed. That means anything you do at that point is pretty shaky as far as the self-defense notion goes. Add to that the size difference, and yes, I would expect the person getting pelted with the beer to be at fault for any fight that ensues. What position are you going to take? The idea that the assailant might have some other weapon, and chose to start the fight with the much larger person with a cup of beer, and THEN pull out the gun? Sounds pretty unlikely.
I don't know about you, but if I get assaulted, I don't wait around to find out if the guy has a second weapon of if he's used them all up. How do you (or Artest!) know that the guy wasn't going to start throwing something else next? Cell phones, batteries, chairs? Those have all been thrown by fans at players - including on friday night! You don't know what might have come next, and I don't understand how you expect Artest to have known at the time. You get attacked and you react. You don't wait around to see what the next volley will be made up of.
I think you're on the right track, kinda.. but any notion of reacting goes straight out the window if you have to pursue the person. If the player could have punched the assailant from where he stood, the player would have a fair chance of claiming he simply reacted to the assault. As soon as he had to enter the stands to do it, it lost the immediacy needed for any reactionary defense. These are people paid millions of dollars for their supposed ability to think fast, analyze situations on the fly, change tactics on a dime, etc.. What he did was no more reactionary than waiting for the guy out by his car. Would you still call that self defense?
Have you seen the video? The whole incident (artest rushinig the stands) takes a matter of seconds. Yes, I would absolutely call that reactionary. In my mind, based on my own observations of the event, it was MUCH closer to simply swinging from where you're standing than to waiting in the parking lot. That's just a judgment call. If you disagree, if you really think, after watching the tape, that Artest's actions were carefully weighed and measured, I guess there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.
As far as "being paid to think on the fly, change tactics, etc," I think you have a fundemental misunderstanding of how high level athletics work. These guys are paid to play basketball, not to make decisions. They make *basketball* decisions on the fly, they change *basketball* tactics on a dime. If you've ever seriously played competitive sports, you know that most of what happens is training and instinct. You're trying to portray their basketball decision making as a higher order rational thought process. It's not. Manny Ramirez has the ability to make unbelievable, last second adjustments to pitches and crush them. But by all accounts, he's really not very bright in the conventional sense (I like the guy and I'm not trying to be mean, but that's just a fact). His ability to hit pitches that I couldn't come within a foot of doesn't depend on his ability to "analyze situations on the fly" and make rational decisions. It depends on a great deal of training and an unbelievable amount of talent. Great athletes probably act without rational thought (that is, on instinct and training) more than almost any other type of person. I'm not saying that Artest should be excused because he acts on instinct for a living, but just to argue that he's a "professional on-the-fly decision maker" is way off base.
Yes, the fan was a jerk. Yes, the players were jerks. And for those other posters who say that anyone would have reacted that way, I assure you that you are completely wrong. Some of us still value dignity and civility over any misguided need to show how "manly" we are. Strange that acting like an animal is seen as a display of manhood.
This isn't about proving manliness as far as I'm concerned. This is about standing up for yourself. I'm really puzzled by the idea that many seem to hold that just because you are a professional athlete you have to take abuse from these drunken "fans." The things that get yelled at professional athletes are sickening and would be enough to get you punched in any bar in the world. Racial slurs, sexual slurs, comments about sick family members. And the athletes almost always just shut up and take it. But this got physical. They actually started throwing things at him! I don't care if it was just a cup of beer, these animals thought they had the right to throw things at a stranger just because they don't like the team he plays for. Look, it's very simple. You assault someone twice your size, you start throwing throwing things as him without reason, and you're gonna get it.
Please note that I started my first post by saying that there isn't a single blameless party involved here, as far as I'm concerned. But I think Artest is getting way more than his share of the heat because he's had behavior problems in the past.
Finally, let me say this. Every single time one of these things happens, it's the fans who start it but the players who get the blame. Someone said earlier today's athletes are classless and childish in a way that older athletes weren't, and that may be true. But look at today's fans. A father and son rush a MLB manager on the field. The Mets cancel "battery give-away day" at Shea because they know those batteries will be thrown at John Rocker (few years ago). Riot police have to line the entire field in game six of this years ALCS because they fear fans rushing the umpires and/or red sox after A-rod is called out at first. Even the chair throwing in Texas, though inexcusable, was predicated by some of the vilest slurs and personal attacks you can imagine from the other team's fans. And now, some moron sits a few rows back, hurls insults, and finally hurls a full cup of beer at a player who moments earlier restrained himself when attacked by Ben Wallace. And most of you seem to think this neanderthal should be safe just because he was in the stands, as if that's some kind of "safe zone" from which fans can do whatever they want. I'm sorry, but I just think this is rediculous. The guy was attacked and he fought back. Instead of letting security and/or officals and players handle Artest at that point, more fans rushed the court. As the players were retreating, the entire stadium barraged them with everything that wasn't nailed down, including a chair. The players may be out of control, but from everything I've seen, the fans are almost always far more out of control, and the players by and large show an amount of restraint well beyond what is reasonable to expect of a normal person. Artest snapped, and while he does have to take some blame and punishment for that, I think the reaction by both the public and the NBA is just absurd. He was attacked first. Period.
