Former Pacers Artest, O'Neal, Jackson revisit 'Malice At The Palace' in new documentary

A Netflix documentary is shedding new light on one of the most infamous moments in NBA history.

"Untold: Malice At The Palace" dropped last week, re-examining the 2004 melee between the Indiana Pacers and the then-champion Detroit Pistons. The fracas took place at The Palace in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and left nine people injured.

Indiana’s Metta Sandiford-Artest (then known as Ron Artest), Jermaine O'Neal and Stephen Jackson were at the center of an unprecedented media storm and criminal prosecution after the events of that night. 

In "Untold," the former players tell their side of what happened that night – a viewpoint they feel was ignored at the time.

"If you actually knew what happened, you knew the effects it had on everybody, you wouldn’t even be asking questions," O’Neal said in the film. "Show people all the footage, and then when it’s told, you make your own conclusion on what it is."

"I want the story out there. Like, what happened? Go frame by frame," Artest added.

The documentary takes an in-depth look at the lead-up to and aftermath of the fight that shook the sports world, laying out how exactly the night’s events unfolded — which might be a little different from how fans recall them — using never-before-seen footage and interviews with those who were there. They even tracked down the Pistons fan Artest punched on the court 17 years ago.

To understand why the fight was and remains so poignant, it’s important to understand how things reached their boiling point. 

The Pacers and Pistons had faced each other in the Eastern Conference finals the season prior — which O'Neal refers to as "the series that ignited everything" — so tensions were running high. 

With the Pacers leading 97–82 with 45.9 seconds left in that game on Nov. 19, 2004, Pistons center Ben Wallace attempted a layup but was fouled from behind by Artest, who was actually urged to do so by another Indiana player, Jamaal Tinsley.

Wallace shoved back, other players got involved, and chaos ensued. Artest wound up lying on the scorer's table. Other players on the court continued to brawl as coaches and officials desperately tried to get things under control. 

Then, a Pistons fan, later identified as John Green, threw a cup at Artest, which prompted him and Jackson to jump into the stands. They ended up punching the wrong guy while dozens of fans in the immediate area closed in on the players from all angles, with fists flailing in all directions. Indiana players Eddie Gill and David Harrison also went into the stands.

Artest returned to the court and punched another fan, and O'Neal attempted to do the same. Artest, Jackson and several other Pacers then were escorted to the locker room while fans poured trash on them from the stands above. One fan even unhinged a chair from the stands and threw it into the crowd as the players were leaving the court.

What can be agreed upon all these years later is that things got ugly fast. 

But it's a much different story if you ask the former players. 

Artest and O'Neal, specifically, maintained over the years that the full footage of the violent brawl would prove they were acting in self-defense, saying the "edited conclusion" fed to the public through the media painted a false picture of how things unfolded. 

The documentary opens with the statement that "the raw footage was not made available to the public," arguing the public's perception of the night's events was ultimately skewed.

The Pacers were contenders in the Eastern Conference that season, but the fight essentially cost them any chance at the title because of the hefty player suspensions that followed. At the time of the incident, the Pacers had the best record in the East (7-2), but they finished 44-38 and were the sixth seed in the East playoffs.

Following the brawl, then-commissioner David Stern handed out some of the harshest punishments in sports history, including suspending Artest for the remainder of the season. The ban eventually reached 86 games (regular season and playoffs), and it remains the longest suspension in NBA history. 

Jackson was suspended for 30 games, O’Neal was suspended for 25 (later reduced to 15), and Wallace’s shove drew a six-game ban. 

In all, the NBA suspended nine players for more than 140 games. Artest lost approximately $5 million, while O'Neal's suspension cost him nearly a quarter of his roughly $14.8 million salary that season, per ESPN.

Stern also then implemented a highly debated dress code in response to the media’s coverage of the incident. The code required all players to wear "business casual" attire when engaging in team or league business for the 2005 season. 

The league also revised arena guidelines to restrict the size (24 ounces) and number (two) of alcoholic beverages sold per customer, banned the sale of alcohol during the fourth quarter and defined a nine-point code of conduct for fans.

What’s most perplexing about the aftermath of all this is not the punishments or the new rules, but the widespread media coverage that largely deemed the players at fault. 

"It wasn’t just the amount of people that were saying it – it was the stature of the people who were saying it," then-Pacers president Donnie Walsh says.

The media didn't hold back. NBC Sports' Bob Costas went as far as to say that the players' "actions and attitudes bespeak kind of a thug mentality," while another broadcaster suggested the NBA should be renamed the TBA — the Thug Basketball Association. 

Others referred to the incident as "the ugliest act of pure hooliganism in U.S. sports history" by an "estranged hip-hop generation of players" and said the "thug image" would be "there until somebody excises it from the league." Former sports anchor Keith Olbermann even labeled the players "gangster wannabes."

Even Pacers legend Reggie Miller, in street clothes at the time as he recovered from a broken finger, was involved on some level. One of the very few policemen (three) on the scene almost maced Miller because he didn’t recognize the Indiana guard.

"How do you not know Reggie Miller's on the Indiana Pacers?!" Jackson exclaims in the documentary.

The 2004-05 season ended up being the last of Miller’s 18-year, Hall of Fame career.

"If the brawl wouldn’t have happened, we would have been champions, no question about it," Jackson says. "No question. … That’s the only thing I regret about the whole situation is not being able to do what we said we were going to do for Reggie." 

On Friday's edition of "The Herd," O'Neal joined Colin Cowherd to discuss the repercussions of the event and the impact of the documentary in the first week of its release.

"I've watched this [documentary] 14 times, and Colin, to be honest, not one time have I not gotten emotional about it," O'Neal said.

"Because people don't understand the magnitude of what this did to a lot of things. It put a league that I love so much to this day as an alumni under extreme pressure, where [there] was no template to deal with. Which then allowed the general public or media to create a narrative that then wasn't about our safety or about that night or even about real information.

"[Instead] it's about three players punching fans, that all of a sudden now are criminals, all of a sudden are thugs – tattoo-wearing, hip-hop-listening, braid-wearing players," O'Neal added. "And people rolled with that narrative for years. … And I know part of my love for playing basketball went away, to be quite honest. … [But] everything that I went through in that event … made me a better man."

Following the incident, O’Neal played three more All-Star seasons with the Pacers and stayed in Indiana until 2008, before he was traded to Toronto. He went on to play for Miami, Boston and Phoenix before finishing his career with the Golden State Warriors in 2014. 

Jackson also retired from the NBA in 2014 after stints with the Warriors, then-Bobcats, Bucks, Spurs and Clippers. He most recently played for the Killer3s, a 3-on-3 basketball team that competes in the BIG3, until 2019. 

Artest was the only player involved who later won a championship, which he did with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2010 after requesting a trade in the aftermath of the brawl and spending two seasons with the Kings and one with the Rockets. He left the NBA in 2014 to play overseas for two years before returning to the Lakers from 2015 to '17, and he served as a player development coach for the NBA G League's South Bay Lakers until 2018.

As for those in the stands that night, five Detroit fans were charged with misdemeanor assault and battery, and the fan who threw the chair drew a charge of felonious assault. They were sentenced to up to two years' probation and ordered to pay up to $6,000 in restitution.

All the charged players pleaded no contest to assault charges and were sentenced to probation and community service.

Will this Netflix documentary about the Pacers-Pistons brawl change fans' minds or the final narrative about that night? Only time will tell.

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