Matty Madden's Sports Journal

Of all the things that can go wrong in sports, professional athletes climbing into the stands and fighting with drunk fans might be the worst nightmare of any league executive. The 2004 Pistons-Pacers brawl, affectionately dubbed “The Malice at the Palace,” stands in a league of its own in terms of pure insanity in professional sport.

 To summarize the chaos as briefly as possible, league stars Ron Artest and Ben Wallace got into a fight at the tail end of a blowout game. Artest laid down on a press table in an attempt to calm down, where he was met with a cup of beer thrown by a drunk and boorish fan. Artest climbed into the stands to confront the fan and was followed by his fellow players, causing the officials to call the game with 45.9 seconds left. When it was all said and done, Artest asked a simple question to his teammates in the locker room: “Are we gonna get in trouble?” The NBA was kind enough to provide him with an immediate, resounding “yes.”

Artest was suspended for the remainder of the season, which totaled 86 missed games. Stephen Jackson, who followed Artest into the stands, was suspended for 30 games. Jermaine O’Neal, Ben Wallace, Anthony Johnson, Reggie Miller, Chauncey Billups, Derrick Coleman, and Elden Campbell all received suspensions.  All in all, the brawl cost the men involved a combined total of $11,548,832 in salary from missed games.

On top of the punishment from the league, the players involved received criminal charges. Artest, O’Neal, and Jackson were all sentenced to one year of probation, 60 hours of community service, and anger management counseling. The fans were also criminally charged and banned from attending Pistons home games. The NBA also beefed up their security between the players and stands and limited the amount of alcohol that could be sold to fans.

Despite the brutal, swift reaction from the NBA, the response to the brawl was much more polarizing in the fanbase and the media. Opinions on the brawl ranged from “it was completely the fault of the drunk fans,” to “NBA players are all violent thugs,” to “I am going to blow up the Palace when the Pacers come back here.”

Regardless of whose fault anyone thought it was, the NBA had to ensure something this damaging to their reputation could never happen again. The suspensions and criminal charges were a good start. Suspending stars like Artest showed they were taking the situation seriously, but the increased security made entering the stands basically impossible. The league made the right calls and handled the situation about as well as you can handle something as ridiculous as something called “The Malice at the Palace.”

            The 2020 NBA Bubble was an absolute storm of media coverage. With nearly 400 professional athletes living in close quarters, it’s no surprise that there was a new story every other day. While it was funny watching Rajon Rondo complain about his food or Lou Williams escaping the bubble and mysteriously ending up at a strip club, the bubble also set the stage for the biggest wildcat strike in sports history.

            A wildcat strike is a work stoppage that is not authorized by the workers’ labor union. This kind of strike happens quickly and in secrecy, so as to not alert any authorities or representatives from the labor union. Wildcat strikes are effective because they are a form of action that occurs outside of the typical bureaucratic function of a labor union.

            On August 23^rd, 2020, Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back and killed by a police officer in Kenosha County, Wisconsin. Blake’s murder spurred on a wave of civil unrest in Wisconsin. As protestors clashed with police, the Milwaukee Bucks watched on from the NBA Bubble, 1,065 miles away from their home court, wondering what they could do to help the cause.

            Just one hour before their scheduled game before the Orlando Magic, the team refused to exit their locker room. Minutes before the game was scheduled to start, the Magic followed suit and walked off the court. Word began to spread, and the Clippers and Lakers, the NBA’s top two teams at the time, followed suit and refused to play that night. After this, play was paused as players began meeting to discuss strategy. At times, they considered extending the strike and cancelling the season outright, but the NBA managed to strike a deal with the players for them to come back and resume play just 3 days after the initial strike.

            This was a moment when NBA players demonstrated their collective power to the league. They wanted to see change both in and out of the league, and they leveraged their powers as the laborers that make the league functional to do it. While it was a short strike, it was a powerful demonstration of what collective action can do, and a reminder to the league that the players have the power, not executives.  

In my sport and strategic communication class, we were given the assignment to interview a sports professional and create an infographic about them. I interviewed Michael McCartin, a golf course designer who I met when I was working with the Virginia State Golf Association. His story is fascinating to me so I focused the infographic on his career and how he got to where he is today.

The first photo is from the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, where the USA Men’s Hockey team miraculously beat the Soviet Union. This picture shows 3-time Olympic gold medalist Vladislav Tretiak disappointed as the USA team celebrates. This would be Treitak’s very last game with the Soviet Union as he retired shortly after the loss. What stands out to me in this image is the contrast between Tretiak’s body language and the Americans celebrating in the corner. This photo truly represents the downfall of Soviet hockey in the Olympics, as many players retired after the loss along with Treitak.

The second photo is from the 2010 Olympic Games when Team Canada won the gold medal in dramatic fashion, as team captain Sidney Crosby scored an overtime game winning goal against Sweden to secure the gold for Canada. My favorite part of this image is the unbridled joy in Crosby’s face and body language. It takes a lot of skill to capture a player’s facial expression, especially in such a tense moment. 

These two images represent very different eras of dominance in hockey. The first represents the decline of Soviet hockey, as the humiliating loss combined with the fall of the Soviet Union just ten years later led to the complete dissolution of the Red Army dynasty that won 6 gold medals in a row. The second picture represents the birth of Sidney Crosby’s Team Canada. They went on to win the 2014 Gold Medal in a fashion so dominant that people complained about the games being boring. Scott Neidermayer’s appearance in the photo also represents a passing of the torch from the old guard of Canada to the young star in Crosby.

The strategic communications campaign surrounding English cricket took a two-way approach to research. The primary source of information for the campaign came from interviews with prominent figures in English cricket, including professional players, coaches, managers, and marketing coordinators. The goal of the interviews was to work out the prevailing attitudes towards the sport, while determining what structural changes can be made to broaden the sport’s appeal.

The second I began reading about the perceptions of cricket in England, I noticed an immediate parallel in an American sport and this quote summarizes it perfectly:

“One of the challenges facing contemporary professional cricket is the need to generate interest in what is seen by many as a game which belongs to a bygone age and that is played at County clubs that can be experienced as stuffy or unwelcoming”

Maria Hopwood, 2005.

There’s really no way around it: young Americans hate golf. It’s viewed as boring, too slow, bad for the environment, and is usually played at stuffy and unwelcoming country clubs. There is currently a TikTok creator who exclusively makes videos about hating golf and she has over 100,000 followers and 3.3 million likes.

The main barrier of entry for getting into golf for most Americans is the cost. The annual cost of a golf club membership can range anywhere from $3,000 to $100,000, and single round of golf in Virginia can be up to $100. Much like cricket, golf is seen as a sport for the older and wealthier people of the country.

The target of the English cricket campaign was young people, as they’re likely to stay with a club for much longer. Golf clubs could take a similar approach with a concerted effort to court the membership of young people. Interviewing a range of people within the sport while also surveying younger demographics about their opinions on golf would be an effective way to determine what changes can be made to the sport in order to court younger demographics. Much like cricket in 2003, golf needs to find a way to shed it’s current reputation in order to secure it’s future in the United States.

The key difference between my sports media diet now versus five years ago is that the amount of TV I watch has dropped substantially. Five years ago I watched NHL Network much more than I do now, and I’ve mostly replaced it with social media content. Today, I mostly get my sports content through social media, most notably through Twitter. People post highlight mixtapes, interview clips, and news much faster than television sports channels produce content.

I still do watch television for sports, and it’s really the only reason I still hang on to cable, as internet streams are quite unreliable. I also enjoy the NBA on TNT Halftime Show, which is something that is still for the most part inaccessible outside of cable.

As far as changes I believe will occur, I think we’ll see the major North American sports leagues be auctioned off to various streaming services, as cable slowly gets phased out in favor of streaming. It’s already beginning with NBC’s Peacock’s recent acquisition of the WWE Network library of content.

If I could wave a magic wand, I would make internet streaming of sports better. Until we get broadband in more homes, it won’t be as reliable as cable, so I’d probably wave a wand and just improve everyone’s internet.

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