Sadly, I don’t think we can blame this on economic woes. This sort of thing has happened before in much better financial times, and it’ll probably happen again. It’s just knuckleheads being knuckleheads. I’ve never understood what makes someone think it’s a good idea to celebrate a championship by destroying things and lighting stuff on fire. Perhaps that means I’m likely not a knucklehead myself. At least there’s that.

Am I just jaded or do fans use any championship as an excuse to riot?

If the Lakers had lost the Finals: riot

If the Lakers had won at home: bigger riot

I think we should be grateful they won in Orlando and not at a home game.

It’s a stark contrast to see Iranians rioting for a fair election and a bunch of douchebags doing it because of a dumb sporting event.

If you are rioting because something good happened… YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

And…Victoria Lane hits the nail squarely on the head. Douchebags.

and we find ourselves forced to choose between dinner and a doctor’s visit

That precise scenario happened to me in April of this year, producing a wicked domino effect that finds me losing my apartment on July 1; the worst part of the downward spiral was watching helplessly as it accelerated — not necessarily out of control either, there was a certain self-contained logic to the initial trigger (the choice between dinner and the doctor’s care) and the chaos that followed. Sort of like how a riot forms.

Victoria hit it head on. I’ve never understood why the douchebags riot after big games and it has happened plenty of times over the years. Makes no sense at all.

can one of the players get on the horn and let these people know what an embarrassment they are.

@ rodger: That sucks. That sucks. I like the “self-contained logic” though, because you are right – actual riots stemming from public unrest are just the tail end of a logical chain of events.

@ lezguill: I saw Kobe Byrant this morning on SportsCenter – I was hoping someone would ask him to publicly decry the shitz from last night, but natch, no one wanted to rain on anyone’s parade.

actual riots stemming from public unrest are just the tail end of a logical chain of events

Cause and effect is always a sober and effective tool for analyzing the tics of human behavior, Queequeg. Nothing happens randomly. Nothing.

Smashing cars and stealing shoes from stores after a sporting event being a form of protest against the economy? Give me a fucking break. It’s beer fueled mob mentality, nothing more.

Yes, the economic situation is not great, but we aren’t even near the situation people faced in the Great Depression. Seeing looters wearing team jerseys tells me that they aren’t so poor, that they can’t afford the luxury items.

There are times where public insurrection is valid and even necessary, but the Lakers winning the championship ain’t one of them.

It seems that the psychology of what happened ( as cobbled together via eyewitness accounts) had more to do with a situation where the crowd thought they had driven away the police and thus ‘won’ some battle. That’s when what was merely very gregarious, drunken celebrating turned violent.