The weirdest part looking back is I'm not sure why I was watching that game to begin with. I wasn't a huge NBA fan at this point. Weirdly enough, it was the exploits of that season, with the rise of Shaq's Heat, and more than that, the Seven-Seconds-Or-Less Suns, that got me into the sport (following my Jordan dalliance as a truly young kid). But anyway, it was an early-season Friday Night game on ESPN, back when that mattered, and it was between the two teams that contested the prior season Eastern Conference Finals. I guess I bought into the game's hype.
But there I was, thirteen years old, watching this game between two defensive-heavy East stalwarts, where late in teh game the Pacers were cruising. I guess I also watched the game because I knew the teams had bad blood. So it wasn't really a surprise when Ben Wallace fouled Ron Artest super hard. Hell, that's what all of us were kind of watching the game for, to see some fireworks. And we got it - and then Artest comically went to the side boards to lay down on them to not get into some sort of pissing match. It was comical at that point - comoical and dramatic and everything we all signed up for. If the game more or less ended there (the Pacers were up by a lot), it probably gets remembered fondly. And then taht cup was thrown...
I still remember watching all of it unfold. The Malice at teh Palace is probably one of those events that many people will claim to have been at even if they weren't, and millions more will claim to have been watching when they weren't, but I was. And it is all so seared into my mind watching all of that madness unfold. Even being thirteen, I knew this was a landmark moment in the NBA.
Almost more than the events of the Malice, I remember listening to WFAN the next day (I was a daily listener at this point on my walkman-that-had-radio) and remember this being the only topic of discussion. Of course the general sense was of being horrified, and it being a scourge on the league, and it being a moment that would never die (hey - those people were right). There was also a lot of commentary that looking abck had racist undertones - the thug league unleashed, but you know what - there was some merit in that very moment. Yes, the fans were to blame - but let's not forget Stack Jack running into the stands to lay haymakers. It was the #1 story even before we knew the ultimate outcome of the suspensions (which curtailed a potentially dominant Pacers team). It was everything. It took over sports.
Back to the moment itself, there were so many surreal ones that were just insane and memorable and infamous in the moment. From the start of it all with Artest running up, to Jermaine O'Neal clocking the fan who ran onto the court (probably the single best "shot"), to Stack's nonsense, to the image of coaches escorting Artest off the court minutes later with Artest acting like he had been shot and near death with all the added drama. All of it was just so hauntingly beautiful. Of course, this was horrifying, but it was also just a moment that no one will ever forget, for good or bad (mostly bad, I guess).
In the end, I do love the fact I watched it, I remember every second of it. I have few other memories of the 2004-05 NBA season in terms of actually watching things, other than a memorable Suns - Wizards game near Christmas when the SSOL Suns beat Arenas who dropped 50+ or something, and then various playoff games. One shouldn't necessarily remember a regular season NBA game twenty one years later. But this one - this game.. yeah we should all remember it.
Looking back, other than the suspensions and the immediate fury of "have thugs taken over the league", nothing much really changed. The NBA instituted a dress code the next season in effort to "un-thug" the league (whihc probably only served to memorialize photos of NBA players in various levels of hilariously loose, baggy suits...). But it's not like they moved the fans any further back from the action, and not doing so led to many other incidents which luckily (or not) did not escalate into the Malice. The same event could easily happen tomorrow for all I know. The next powder keg is out there. Crazy players, from Draymond Green to others, still exist. If it does happen again, all I'll say is I hope I'm around to witness it live like I did twenty-one years back in a grainy, small ass TV in my basement.
