Sidelining the sidelines

By now all of America has seen the video of the Raptors' Kyle Lowry chasing a loose ball into the sideline seats the other night and getting a shove on the shoulder from one of the patrons sitting in them. And by now, probably, all of America knows it wasn't just some privileged tool who did the shoving, but a privileged tool who's also a minority owner the Golden State Warriors.

The NBA has promptly banned said tool for all time pending a review, and the Warriors have banned him for the rest of the playoffs -- which seems a trifle weak in the knees, response-wise.

What we don't know is why the seats in which Said Tool was sitting are still there.

Look. I get it. NBA teams can extract a lot of cabbage from the so-called Nicholson seats, and do, and have since Nicholson and Dyan Cannon and the rest of the Hollywood crowd were sitting in those seats in the Forum watching the Showtime Lakers back in the day. So it's a chunky revenue stream for the teams, and a prestige deal for those who sit in them.

But Jack Nicholson never put his hands on Larry Bird, sitting in those seats. Spike Lee exchanged barbs with Reggie Miller, but never shoved him. And none of the folks in the prestige seats back in the day ever roamed the sideline behind the head coach of their team, as Drake does up there in Canada.

Which is to say: Even the privileged knew where the line was, once upon a time. Now ...

Well. Not so much, apparently, here in this age of rampant entitlement.

The national zeitgeist here in 2019 seems to be if you've got money, rules don't apply to you. Rules are for all those wage slaves chained to their oars on the old 9-to-5 slog, not for the beautiful people.

Admittedly, this is a grotesque stereotype. It's an extrapolation based on an extremely small sample size, and the Blob fully owns up to that. But it does seem as if the entitled forget their place a lot more these days, apparently figuring their place is anywhere they decide it is.

If that is indeed the case, it doesn't take a nuclear physicist to see the meltdown coming, What happens the first time Said Tool shoves a player, and the player shoves back? Do we really want to see another Malice in the Palace, which was instigated by a fan throwing beer on the Man Formerly Known As Ron Artest?

He and Stephen Jackson were rightfully pilloried for going up into the stands that night to throw down with the hooligans. It was an ugly scene with some explicit racial overtones; those simply can't be avoided when the majority of the players in the NBA are African-American, and the majority of fans within shoving or throwing distance of the floor are white.

So far, the players have shown some admirable restraint in dealing with the Said Tools who think it's their right to put their hands on players. But the Lowry incident, and incidents involving Russell Westbrook earlier in the season, make you wonder how much longer that restraint can last.

And so it's time the Nicholson seats went the way of the dodo bird, revenue stream or no revenue stream.

Get rid of 'em. Remove the implication they present that the fans are somehow entitled to be part of the action. Fans are fans; players are players. It's time the NBA re-drew the line between the two it erased in the name of making a buck.

Otherwise, more Malice awaits. You can make book on it.