Off Wing Opinion

NBA Commissioner David Stern in an interview with the AP on what the league can realistically accomplish when it comes to fan misbehavior:

"The reality is that our society and our arenas exist based upon a social contract," Stern said. "Everyone knows that if 20,000 fans decided to go on a rampage, we'd have a serious problem on our hands, no matter what we did."

Then again, it's not all 20,000 fans we need to worry about -- just the fraction of one percent that make life miserable for all the rest.

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Juan Non-Volokh is being pretty hard on Stern, taking him to task for not condemning the fans involved with more vigor. Start here, then go here, and here.

Here in Washington, the name of Robin Ficker is well-known for his once-constant jabbering behind the visitor's bench at Washington Wizards (formerly Bullets) games.

Yesterday, he showed up in the New York Times to give a lesson in fan ettiquette:

Fans who don't know the bounds of their own conduct should be held responsible for whatever happens - and should also be barred from future games.

In all my years as one of the most vociferous fans of the Bullets (the team changed its name to the Wizards in 1997), I never resorted to anything stronger than the English language. Although some people thought I knew no bounds, my rules were simple and effective: no drinking, no swearing, no racial or sexual comments, and no comments about children.

To be filed next to your "Free Tyson" and "Free Kobe" t-shirts: "Free Artest."

Thanks to Women's Hoops, and Radley Balko for the linkage.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 23rd, 2004 at 4:39 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.