this is not high school or middle school, the smallest player in the nba will go against the biggest one, size doesnt matter, they've gone through lot worse than ben wallace and rasheed wallace.
Those players have hearts bigger than anyone else, you know how they say it's not the size of a dog in a fight, it's the size of a fight in a dog. Well it's true, Someone like gary payton will go up against anyone you put infront of him, same goes for artest but in this situation he found enaugh stregth to get out of the fight untill some little punk provoked him, gettin splasshed with a beer in a situation like that is worse than gettin pushed. Cause once again, you're Adrenalin flowing, theres fans probobly yelling all kinds of racial slurs and all of a sudden, splash and you get hit with a beer, obviously you will explode.