This is a bit old in blog time, but I think it's still important to run. During the Denver-New Orleans game on Saturday, a fan actually through a beer bottle onto the court. It's really ridiculous when you consider the home team was winning by a huge margin and the Hornets weren't really doing anything worth such unpleasantries. It occurred in the waning seconds, and it wasn't the only incident players faced that night. Heading to the locker room for half time, Chris Paul also received a towel to the face from a fan. Reggie's on tap for cutting beer sales after the 3rd quarter. Me, I'm wondering why they're selling bottles and not plastic cups. Maybe Denver's really going overboard on combatting NOLA, and they decided to boycott plastic cups as they fuel most of the Bourbon Street shenanigans.
Anyway, it begs the question, when is fan involvement too much? We love the fans running to celebrate 715 with Hank Aaron. And we love charging football fields to cap a championship run. But the NBA's a little different. Despite having fans and cameramen right there on the court so that the players have to jump over them and potentially hurt themselves (something I've always questioned), the NBA doesn't generally see too many fans breaking that court 4th wall. And you just don't throw stuff at an NBA game (unless you want a Jermaine fist to the face), mostly because of the hard wood floor, which means objects and players break more easily. I found footage of one fan actually achieving the feat, though.
It occurs to me that part of it is probably that you can't get into the courtside area seats unless you're a big spender. And people who've paid that much to get that close don't really want to be thrown out. UPDATE (while I write): I just watched the Pistons-Pacers brawl from 2004 (what a sad night for basketball). I didn't know this. Apparently, beer bottles generally are sold at NBA games. How did I miss that? And how did the Comish miss that? Doesn't that seem like an oversight? In this vid, Jeff Foster "trips" the rampant fan. It's just scary to watch the carnage from 2004 and think anyone would risk that kind of altercation ever again.
