Indiana Pacers Basketball Team

Indiana Pacers guard Jamaal Tinsley and teammates Marquis Daniels and Keith McLeod were involved in a fight with a bar manager after a home loss to Golden State on Tuesday, police said. No one was arrested or charged after the fight. Indianapolis police Lt. Doug Scheffel said Wednesday it would take several days to complete the investigation to determine if charges would be filed.

After suspending Ron Artest on Dec. 6, using all 19 shopping days before Christmas and 31 more before next Christmas, the Indiana Pacers finally found a new home for their controversial forward, sending him to Sacramento for Peja Stojakovic. "We're gamblers," Sacramento co-owner Gavin Maloof said Wednesday night in New York before the Kings' game against the Knicks, "so we're going to take a chance on him." As usual with anything involving Artest, it wasn't simple.

Back home again for what Reggie Miller called the biggest game in franchise history -- on the same day as the Indianapolis 500, no less -- the Indiana Pacers had hoped to seize the wheel in the Eastern Conference finals. But the Detroit Pistons, behind a commanding performance by Richard Hamilton, sent the series careening in a wildly different direction Sunday night in Game 5, running down the Pacers' expectations and moving to within one victory of the NBA Finals.

Somewhere, the Lakers surely were laughing. Or yawning. In what passes for high-caliber Eastern Conference playoff basketball these days -- in a game that, hard to believe, matched the conference's top two teams -- the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers thrashed about for nearly three hours Tuesday night in the Palace of Auburn Hills, littering the court with bricks.

What was that? In the entire overheated history of NBA violence -- which ranges from the comic (Jeff Van Gundy attaching himself to Alonzo Mourning's ankle) to the tragic (Kermit Washington caving in Rudy Tomjanovich's face) -- there was never anything to compare with Friday night's riot at Detroit that ended the game against the Indiana Pacers 45.9 seconds early and will result in enough suspensions, arrests and lawsuits to keep the agents and the judicial system busy for a year. What happened?

Even as four professional basketball players were being suspended for brawling with fans in Detroit, the Irvine Boys & Girls Club sponsored a day of nonviolent games Saturday to show kids they do not have to be aggressive to walk away winners. The two events were coincidental, but Friday's brawl involving the NBA's Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers and spectators would have been the perfect tale to illustrate the point counselors were trying to make.

Four National Basketball Assn. players were suspended indefinitely Saturday after a melee at the Detroit Piston-Indiana Pacer game in which fans and players attacked one another, leaving the image-savvy league reeling from one of the ugliest incidents in its history. In banishing Indiana's Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson and Jermaine O'Neal and Detroit's Ben Wallace, NBA Commissioner David Stern called Friday night's violence "shocking, repulsive and inexcusable."

Shaquille O'Neal, known for hyperbole, has said the Christmas Day game at Staples Center between his former team, the Lakers, and his current team, the Miami Heat, may be the "highest-rated game in the history of sports television." It might not even be the highest-rated NBA game that day. There is suddenly increased interest in what was the Christmas Day undercard game -- Detroit versus Indiana at Indianapolis, on ESPN at 9:30 a.m. PST.

Players around the NBA on Saturday questioned the behavior of fans, security personnel at the Palace of Auburn Hills, and the four suspended players in Friday night's incident -- Ron Artest, Jermaine O'Neal and Stephen Jackson of the Indiana Pacers, and Ben Wallace of the Detroit Pistons.