This riot was provoked by fans and executed by fans, and if I had my way
when these teams meet again in December and March, I would place a net cage
around the court to separate fans from players.

An athletic event is an unscripted live drama in which emotions between audience and entertainer can boil over. We saw it happen in major league baseball in September, when Frank Francisco of the Texas Rangers hurled a chair into the seats in Oakland, Calif., and when the Dodgers' Milton Bradley menaced fans in Los Angeles with a plastic bottle. We saw it the N.B.A. in 1995 when Houston's Vernon Maxwell went after fans in Portland, Ore.

At every N.B.A. game, fans who feel the price of their ticket gives them license to shout obscenities at players set the tone for a potential riot. The presence of security guards and the restraint of players are all that stand between war and peace.