Post #126836 by tikilee on Mon, Nov 22, 2004 10:29 AM

Wow, Detroit’s getting a bad rap, yet again, or was it again and again, or perhaps again and again, and again. Half of the comments on this post have me pretty pissed. I understand the situation was ugly. I live twenty minutes away from The Palace (Piston's stadium) and have watched this stuff over and over and over again for the last few days. To keep things professional I just want to say not everyone at the game were drunk, as many have assumed. There were many innocent bystanders in the mix. The first guy who got hit didn't even throw the cup of beer. Whoever the guy was who did throw it deserves to be fined and banned from all sports arenas as far as I'm concerned. But let me say this, he wasn't the first guy to throw a beer and Artest wasn't the first player to get hit with a beer. Hell, Patrick Ewing got spit on by a fan last year and things didn't go crazy the way it did here the other night. If you ask me that’s far worse than having a "career ending projectile" cup of beer thrown at you. The selected few fans that were involved deserve punishment, but that doesn’t mean that Detroit is full of "pathetic half assed Eminem wannabe sports fans". If some fan from a Lakers game through a beer at a player from Detroit and that player along with his teammates started knocking down innocent people in the stands and throwing punches at people who they believed threw the beer, wouldn't you expect that the fans would fight back. If you're at that game and your friend, girlfriend, wife, or kid next to you gets knocked down or hit wouldn't you jump on top of that player to try and stop him. These are big strong guys. This could have happened anywhere. I've heard so much negative sh*t about Detroit these last three days I'm ready to puke.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here. It was an ugly scene the other night. Twenty people went to the hospital. I'm just trying to defend the good people here, not the handful of jackasses who got involved, the good people and spirit that is here everyday. This could have happened anywhere, Dallas, Milwaukee, anywhere. But it happened because this is Detroit. Not all the fans were a bunch of raging drunken lunatics but they were because this is Detroit. Artest shouldn't have been provoked, but if he's attacking innocent people don't they have the right to defend themselves. But they didn't defend themselves; they rioted because this is Detroit. All of you have a right to your opinion and I appreciate every post, I'm not trying to lash out in revenge but don't you people know how much these type of comments just break this city's heart. (My own included)