AUBURN HILLS, Mich. >> For the most part, he tries to laugh it off. Whenever veteran forward Metta World Peace enters the Palace of Auburn Hills, he cracks wise. “A lot of history here,” he might say.
“I’ll just say that to one of the guys,” World Peace said. “Like a little joke.”
World Peace was inactive for Wednesday’s game against the Pistons, so he watched from behind the bench in his final appearance at the Palace. After playing in the arena since 1988, including the 1989 and 2004 Finals against the Lakers, the Pistons will move to a new downtown home next season.
During the Lakers’ morning walk-through, a lot of comments were made in jest about World Peace’s role in the Malice in the Palace, the November 2004 melee that became the most infamous brawl in NBA history.
World Peace suggested he should snap a selfie in the spot where the fan threw a cup at him. A couple of teammates, whose identities World Peace protected, lay on the scorers’ table, mimicking their future teammate’s actions amid the brawl between the Pistons and World Peace’s Indiana Pacers.
“It happened so long ago,” World Peace said. “How many years ago was that? Twelve years ago? I have no choice but to laugh about it now.”
It took him a long time to feel that way about the brawl with which he will always be identified. He was suspended for a record 86 games for the incident.
Lakers coach Luke Walton’s father, Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Walton, was announcing the game for ESPN, and on the live broadcast said, “This is a low moment in NBA history.”
In the quiet moments, however, the jokes stop and the most infamous brawl in NBA history comes flooding back.
“I see flashbacks at times,” World Peace said. “When nobody’s in there, you can reflect more. When the fans are there you shoot and score, it’s easy. But when nobody’s out there … I see exactly where everything happened.”
In the years since, World Peace has become a leading advocate for mental health programs and education. Prior to Wednesday’s game against the Pistons, he visited an inner-city high school to try to inspire students.
World Peace, 37, won a title as a key member of the Lakers’ last championship team in 2010, and returned each of the last two seasons, despite diminished skills, to serve as a mentor on a roster laden with youth.
The brawl is something World Peace rarely discusses with his teammates, most of whom were grade-schoolers when it took place. Larry Nance Jr. said World Peace is “reserved” when the topic comes up.
“We’re on the road,” World Peace said. “We’re trying to win games. So nobody’s really focusing on (the fact) we’re back in Detroit until somebody brings it up. That’s it.”
World Peace said the Palace has been “a great building, great fans” and that his Pacers teams “had a lot of wars” with the Pistons. He pointed to the 2004 Eastern Conference finals, six months before the brawl and called those six games the “roughest games I ever played in … it was bruising.”
“It was amazing,” he said. “They came out on top, but it says a lot.”
The Pistons went on to beat the Lakers in five games in the 2004 Finals.
Lessons from loss
Luke Walton was a rookie when the Lakers lost to the Pistons in 2004. He averaged 19.3 minutes in four appearances in his first NBA Finals, and tallied eight assists in a Game 2 victory, the Lakers’ only win in the series.
He has his own bad memories of the Palace.
“All the fruit they’d give us was rotten and stale and the popcorn was stale,” he said. “The hot water didn’t work in the showers.
“I respect it, honestly. It’s the NBA Finals. They’re trying to win. Make it uncomfortable for the other team, but obviously it’s got a lot of history here and it’ll be missed.”
Walton remembers those Finals more for the way the Pistons played without a dominant superstar.
“That team was completely committed to each other,” he said, “completely committed to winning. And you know they really dismantled us in that series. As much as it hurts, you can see how powerful that can be.”
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