I thought I was the only one seeing the player/fan fight at the Pacers-Pistons game, and especially the reaction to it, as at least partly a race issue, and I found that fact in itself disturbing. But both Harvey Araton and Liz Robbins in today's NY Times brought it up, as did Aaron Brown on CNN last night. If I were smarter I'd give you the links, but I don't know how. (Yes, Keith, I know you told me how, but I must be doing it wrong.) Anyway, the NY Times and CNN aren't hard to find. From where I sit, the point is this: despite -- or because of? -- being priced out of the stadiums, inner city blacks have retained a unique relationship to basketball as opposed to other major sports, supplying players, style and attitude. The attitude part is felt often as an affront to the increasingly wealthy, almost entirely white fans -- at the price of a ticket these days you have to be wealthy, and especially to sit courtside, where the jackasses who started the trouble Friday were sitting. More and more, fans in all sports seem to feel they own the players, and have a right to verbally and physically attack them when they don't perform. Now, rich white guys feeling like they own sweaty, half-dressed young black guys brings up a historically not-distant American nightmare. When the black guys refuse to act classy, grateful and humble -- when, like Artest, they're as big jackasses as the white guys, only more talented -- white America gets turned off. The fear of that, which translates directly into loss of TV audience share, is what the NBA was trying to counter with the severity of the penalties. The message: Don't worry, we have these boys under control. If I'm wrong, where are the expressions of outrage from the NBA about the behavior of the fans? Demands for arrests, for swifter, earlier ejection of unruly fans in the future? Suggestions that players can legitimately refuse to take the floor until the fans are under control? No, the response from sportswriters (almost all white) and the basketball establishment to the spectacle of young, strong black men going after rich white men who were taunting them has been almost universally to demand the black men be reined in.