Hardin drew a foul( as he is so very good at doing) and after the play Brandon Ingram( who apparently thought he had been targeted all game )gave him a hard shove from behind. He then started getting in the face of a referee with abusive language.
That seemed to be it as Ingram was hauled off, until Paul and Rondo( who dislike each other )started jawing, Rondo then apparently spit on Paul, Paul then stabbed his finger into Rondo’s face/eye. Rondo then threw the first punch, Paul punched back and Ingram like an idiot came flying back in and launched a punch of his own. Stupid all the way around.
You’re not serious that you misunderstood that I was presenting a list of excuses people use to duck out of personal responsibility for their actions and instead thought I was deliberately making a vapid, errant and totally out-of-place argument, are you?
Yes I was. Because you just happened to only use excuses best known for excusing sexual assault accusations. Which was a really poor decision on your part. That kind of hyperbole is as best insensitive.
From my perspective, it was a really poor decision on your part to take the least likely interpretation of my post and then try and blame me for your failure to comprehend.
If the OP really believes that there’s no criminal charges because the potential defendants are millionaires, I suggest he go into his local police station, and tell the story, pretending it happened at a pick-up basketball game, involving lower-middle-class people.
“Yes Sergeant, I’m reporting a crime. See, at a pick-up basketball game, there was a hard foul, and then a push, and one guy (maybe) spit on another and three punches were thrown before the fight was broken up with nobody hurt. II have it all on video with lots of witnesses. You’re going to charge everyone involved with assault right?”
My point is that a couple-three punches and nobody hurt is so trivial that no cops and no prosecutors are going to waste time and money even investigating it, whether it happened at a pick-up game, a bar, a high-school parking lot, or a professional sports event.
To what ends are you pursuing this line of questioning? Do you want assault charges filed for every punch thrown in the United States? How about pushing & shoving matches? A hard enough shove could certainly warrant assault in the right circumstances.
I also disagree with the “outside of the game” line of thinking. Are you saying its only because the fight started after the whistle blew and not before? Should a hard foul on a shooter also result in arrests/charges? A hard foul during a fast break could feasibly cause more harm than a punch.
Anything that happens outside of the game actually being played is not part of the game. That’s why tackling someone during a game of football is okay but tackling that same person while they shop for groceries is not okay. It has to do with consent.
Consent is when people agree on something. If there is no agreement, there is no consent. Hitting someone without consent is assault.
So no, a hard foul on a shooter should not result in charges: there was consent to the possibility of physical contact implicit in playing the game, as long as said physical contact was a part of playing the game.
That’s why pulling out a knife and stabbing someone on the basketball court would get someone arrested, right: it’s not a part of the game of basketball, and therefore no one would have consented to the possibility of being stabbed with a knife.
This was addressed in post #15, tho; did you read that?
Late to the party, but, there is this unspoken rule in sports that essentially what happens on the court/field stays on the court/field. It would probably take something utterly extreme for criminal legal charges to be filed. Although I do not know if there has ever been legal precedent for an athlete to face criminal charges (the Malice in the Palace doesn’t quite fit the description since it wasn’t athlete vs. athlete, it was athlete vs. fans.)
IANAL, but based on what has been posted here, that’s not really true.
Hockey fights are part of the game even though they blow the whistle when the fight starts. Again, it’s accepted as a risk/possibility during a hockey game and charges no one seriously thinks that it’s a criminal assault if it is done following the norms of the game. They have a specific in-game penalty for fighting because it’s part of the game.
Football, baseball, and basketball players occasionally throw punches and it’s considered part of the heat of the moment in a physical game. Most of that happens when play isn’t active, but it’s less clear with football (is the clock running) or baseball (no clock). Courts have ruled as such, check the links earlier in the thread. When 300 pound men are slamming each other to the ground or pitchers are throwing 100 MPH fastballs at someone’s head, people can be expected to get hot under the collar.
Some element of extra-curricular fisticuffs is assumed to be part of the package when you play contact sports. It’s when activity goes beyond the norms (clubbing a player with a hockey stick or driving a player to the ice or boards blindsided) that people consider it a potential criminal act. But regular fisticuffs just doesn’t rise to that level.
In both cases “extensive injury” was cited. Since there was no extensive injury at the Lakers-Rockets game, IANAL but it seems like they most they could charge some of the players with is simple assault rather than assault. And as others have pointed out, simple assault (whether at a professional basketball game, a pick-up game, or at a bar) is simply not always going to get prosecuted. Especially if both sides are walking away with no apparent injury, let-alone extensive injury.
Further, regarding the extensive injury:
In the Freer case - the complainant had “a laceration that required plastic surgery”. And the Green/Maki case it references involved a fractured skull (from a hockey stick during a fight).
In the Floyd case:
and
So while these cases set precedent for fighting being outside of consented risk, that’s about all they have in common with the Lakers-Rockets game where no one had any injury at all.
If I extrapolated too much from that, my apologies.
But the point remains: that incident is not a police matter because no fight with only a couple swings and no injuries would be a police matter. It’s just too trivial for the police and DA to get involved with. If an NBA player savagely beat another one into intensive care, I think the DA and police would probably get involved, just as they would if a guy in a bar parking lot beat someone into intensive care.
This seems so clear to me, it’s hard for me to understand why you’re not accepting it.