Game Changer – Indianapolis Monthly

TWENTY YEARS later, every Hoosier of a certain age remembers where they were the night of November 19, 2004—even if they may not have the date memorized. I was in my room at the Canterbury Hotel after returning from a dinner and job interview for an editing position at this magazine. I had just gotten off the phone with my wife back in Missouri, telling her I thought the evening had gone well, when I flopped onto the bed and turned on the TV. Thumbing through the channels, I came to ESPN and what was supposed to be the waning moments of a regular-season NBA basketball game between the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons at the Palace of Auburn Hills.

What I and millions of viewers across the country saw on the screen was absolute bedlam. Players pushing each other; coaches and officials trying to pry them apart; spectators hurling boos, insults, and eventually food and drinks from concessions onto the court. Fans pelting performers with objects is unfortunately not very shocking. But what happened next was nothing short of seismic: This time, the performers fought back. Players were in the stands scuffling hand-to-hand, face-to-face with fans.

Malice at the Palace, as it was immediately dubbed, was more than a SportsCenter lowlight or a Jerry Springer–style brawl for lowbrow amusement. It was an event that shattered a long-perceived barrier between spectators and performers—a wall that has been all but obliterated by the social media revolution that was just beginning in 2004. It made us reevaluate the rights of fans to vent their frustration over what, in the end, is just a game, and the corresponding restraint expected from athletes who rely on that very fanaticism to provide their wealth and celebrity. And, two years before Twitter was born, this spectacle might have also been the last glimpse at a world in which critics heckled in-person, not behind the anonymity of an online avatar.

There was already bad blood between these two teams, which had faced off in the Eastern Conference Finals just five months prior. In that series, the Pistons upset the top-seeded Pacers, eliminating Indiana in six games en route to an NBA Championship they could never quite grasp. The 2004–05 Pacers reloaded for another title run with NBA All-Stars Jermaine O’Neal and Metta Sandiford-Artest (then known as Ron Artest); newly acquired role player Stephen Jackson; and hometown hero Reggie Miller, who was closing out a Hall of Fame career. The team was 6-2, the best record in the Eastern Conference, and coming into the Palace to face the Pistons.

And Indiana was about to close out their seventh win, up 97-82, when, with 45.9 seconds left in the game, Sandiford-Artest fouled Detroit center Ben Wallace on an attempted layup, bringing his hand across the back of Wallace’s head. Wallace turned and stepped to Sandiford-Artest, shoving him from the lane almost to the 3-point line. Benches cleared. Players, coaches, and refs swarmed. None of this was unusual; worse fights had been breaking out in all sports since time immemorial. There were no punches thrown. The scuffle lasted a matter of seconds. In fact, Sandiford-Artest pulled himself from the melee almost immediately, laying on his back on the scorers’ table with his hands behind his head, a self-calming ritual the famously hotheaded player had adopted to keep himself out of trouble.

But in this case, his stretched-out, 6-foot-7-inch frame provided an easy target. Just as the officials had diffused the situation and were deciding how to finish out the game, the ESPN cameras caught a blue cup of Diet Coke flying from the stands and hitting Sandiford-Artest in the chest. Incensed, he jumped up and leapt over the radio announcers and into the seats to find the culprit. Teammate Jackson followed. At first, Sandiford-Artest accosted the wrong fan, Michael Ryan, throwing him to the ground. John Green, the fan who did throw the cup, came up from behind and tried to put Sandiford-Artest in a headlock. Another spectator, William Paulson, splashed a second drink in Sandiford-Artest’s face. Jackson promptly clocked him with a wild right hand. Mayhem ensued for the next 40 seconds, with players climbing into the seats to scuffle with fans and fans spilling onto the court to threaten and call out players. Punches flew. Insults were exchanged. Somebody threw a chair that barely missed O’Neal. Bystanders feared for their safety.

The immediate aftermath was a slew of player suspensions, nine in all, including Sandiford-Artest, who was forced to miss the rest of the season, an NBA-record 86-game suspension. Five players and five fans, including Green and Paulson, were arrested and charged with assault and battery. All five fans were banned for life from attending Pistons home games. Detroit went on to win the Central Division, while the Pacers limped into the playoffs, where the two teams met again in the conference semifinals. The Pistons prevailed. The following year, Sandiford-Artest demanded a trade, closing the door on his storied Indiana career.

More broadly, the NBA increased security and limited the sale of alcohol at games, cutting drinkers off at the end of the third quarter. The league also laid out a nine-point code of conduct for fans to be announced prior to games. Point No. 1 states, “Players and fans respect and appreciate each other.”

At first, the media lashed out at the Pacers, saying they should have been professionals and shrugged off the fans’ abuse in enemy territory. But in the intervening decades, as social media has minimized the distance between celebrities and fans, the conversation has been reframed somewhat to take a harder look at exactly how much liberty fans deserve for the price of a ticket. In fact, a 2021 Netflix documentary, Untold: Malice at the Palacemarks the debacle as an example of what happens when the media rushes to judgment and blames superstars, who are easy targets, instead of holding all parties accountable.

Perhaps the legacy of Malice at the Palace is the impetus to consider the simple respect we owe each other as human beings—a lesson we still struggle to understand 20 years later.