[gsf23]

Alright..I have been reading and watching all this stuff and it is time for some honesty here. Now, Artest should not have gone into the stands, that is a given, and he deserves whatever punishment the NBA deems fit, but lets look at some things here.

I wish everyone would stop talking about how Artest was hitting people in the stands. WATCH THE TAPE. When Artest runs into the crowd and gets to the wrong guy he never gets a punch off. He tries to grab the guy, the guy falls down and Artest is grabbed before he can get a punch off. The FIRST punch that Artest throws comes after he starts getting punched in the back of the head by the idiot who actually threw the cup.

If anyone deserves a season ban it is Jackson who just went up there swinging at anything that moved.

Where was the security? If they were doing their job, the cup thrower would have been grabbed before Artest could even get off the scorers table.

I was watching the game on ESPN as it happened, twice during the telecast the announcers mentioned that the Pacers were very unhappy about what was going on with the fans behind their bench. Pacer officials complained the the Palace officials about it, and they did nothing. So don't go on about how they should have let security handle the fans. They tried that earlier and the Palace did nothing about it. I may not be an security guru, but you would think that in an NBA game, a good place to have some security would be at the players bench areas, especially after they were having problems with it all game.