I haven’t watched the NBA since Gary Payton´s (I think) moment of glory, which coincided with what I felt was a horrendous regression in the leage that seems to be ongoing. IMHO these guys, whoever they are, should never, ever be allowed to play professional basketball again. They are a disgrace not only to the league and your nation but to the world of organized sports.
Once again I find myself stunned at your view of violence - you people really think it’s O.K. for a professional sportsman to run kicking and screaming into the stands to mercilessly beat up people who migh have thrown beer at him? The fans who effectively pay their wages?
Did you even check these sites out? Your riots/disasters are almost invariably accidents and stampedes and please note the complete absence of players in every single one. The Salvador - Honduras war was a foregone conclusion long before ‘that game’.
Incidently, you are talking about (among other incidents):
1946 Bolton, England
1964 Lima, Peru
1982 Moscow, The Soviet Union
1988 Kathmandu, Nepal
2004 Detroit, USA
Notice the company you’re in?
Since you linked to that BBC article mentioning Burnden Park (or ‘Burden Park’ as BBC called it), let me make this clearer by comparing these two incidents:
Burnden Park: Disaster strikes when two safety barriers collapse, causing a stampede. The record (I think) 67.000 strong crowd of fans helped those injured as best they could but 33 died and over 400 were injured.
Detroit: Professionals basketball players leave the field of play, entering the stands to beat the living crap* out of fans half their size, since they might have thrown beer at one of them.
What I found troubling, besides the violence, was the fact that no-one seemed to be in much of a hurry to get these fuckers off the fans and into the dressing rooms or, better yet, jail. Security should have intervened much, much sooner.
*It didn’t really look like they packed a good punch, though, I saw one fan punched repeatedly, once with a ‘running punch’ but was still up, as were others. I’m pretty sure Airman could hurt those guys and hurt them bad, for what it’s worth. Incidentally, a footballer punched a danish soldier here (once) a couple of days ago, killing the soldier. I’m not saying punches should be fatal but judging from what I saw in that game and what I’ve seen in normal brawls, these gentlemen really aren’t such tough customers.
How many fans do these arenas seat? Is there any security at all?
If Luis Figo were to attack, say, Ronaldinho at the Nou Camp before turning on the fans and beat some silly, he wouldn’t just be charged with inciting a riot - he’d be hung for crimes against humanity. Not that the Nou Camp crowd wouldn’t tear him apart if he could even get near them, which he can’t.
from here
I’m getting mighty tired of always seeing the ‘soccer hooligans are worse than us’ argument when talking about violence in sports in the US - football is an honourable game for the most part but is the world’s most popular sport, so there are bound to be problems from time to time. Don’t even try and tarnish football’s good name by comparing it to this joke of a ‘sport’ that is the NBA ‘basketball’.
Name me one NBA player who was murdered by a fan after a bad play.