It’s strange how two people can live through the same situation and come out of it with different impressions or recollections but if you were on the west side I can kind of see why yours is different to mine. I just never heard any of it myself.

For instance my ‘depression era grandma’ hated Peyton and said the Simon’s should fire the entire team after the brawl and build around Artest and Reggie 🤷🏻

Obviously flawed people exist but imo that’s not what accounted for the declining interest. Reggie also retired at that time and I think that had as much to do with the lost interest as the off court incidents.