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No Justice No Peace May 16, 2007 It was foreordained that this series was going to be emotionally taxing and personally vexing. What I underestimated was the role the league would play in this.
Yesterday, a day after Robert Horry body checked Steve Nash into the scorers table, the league suspended Horry for two games and suspended Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw each a game for leaving the bench.
Let me start by saying that Amare and Boris should not have left the bench area. That is the rule. They are reminded of that probably a hundred times during the season. Leave the bench area and you’ll get suspended. They are responsible for their actions.
Here’s where the league is wrong. What was their crime? They saw their teammate and friend knocked to the ground and they jumped up to go to his aid.
The league has turned a blind eye to the Spurs deplorable tactics in this series and a deaf ear to the Suns when they’ve drawn attention to it. Before the series I call the Spurs a disgrace to competitive team sports and I stand by that. They have been called dirty and it is deserved. It is apparent now that the league not only supports that behavior but it’s rewarding them for it.
Suns owner Robert Sarver said yesterday, “The way this worked out for us, it was, I believe, extremely unfair. The team that plays dirty should not be rewarded and the team that plays fair should not be penalized.”
Stu Jackson defended this institutionalized ignorance by saying, “It's not a matter of fairness. It's a matter of correctness.”
So what does the league expect of their players? They expect them to get kicked in the Achilles, kneed in the groin, and thrown into the scorers table and just smile and wave. They expect them to be hand checked, pushed in the back, and pulled to the ground and just be silent. They expect them to have no reaction when an act of violence is carried out on a teammate. Is that what Jackson means by “correctness”?
And where is NBA Commissioner David Stern in all of this? That gutless weasel canceled his schedule trip to Phoenix to be at Game 5 and slunk off to Cleveland just before the suspensions were announced and has subsequently remained silent.
This is a travesty of justice. A league, whose integrity is annually called into question, and with good reason, cannot afford to be this stupid. With this attitude they have further illustrated how meaningless the regular season is, because no matter what you prove during the season you’d better be willing and able to back it up with “physical play” come playoff time. Meaning you’d better be ready to club, push, pull and knee people, oh but don’t leave the bench. No, no. That is a crime.
So the Spurs, on a clear act of thuggery are going to win while everyone else loses. Three cheers for basketball.
| What do you think?
As with most of David Stern's decisions (i.e. changing the leather ball to a plastic one earlier this season and refusing to change it until finally he realized how unnecessary the move was and how disliked by everyone including fans that the ball was), I emphatically disagree with his decision to suspend Amare and Boris. Now, I'm not a Suns fan, nor am I a Spurs fan so I think my opinion that follows is an objective and fair one. My opinion is this: Certain rules are designed to keep players and fans safe. One such rule is the one requiring players to remain on the bench during a confrontation on the court. I acknowledge that by requiring players to stay on or near the bench during such times, further incitement will be quelled. However, the league is essentially saying that we don't care what the reason for leaving the bench is and we don't care if a player, after initially reacting, takes a moment of self reflection and decides better of engaging in disorderly conduct. What they are saying is that if you leave the bench, no matter what, despite the fact that it is human nature to jump up and run to protect a victim of assault, if a player then changes his mind and decides not to engage, that player is penalized. My question is, does that strict liability enforcement promote the policy behind the rule itself? No, not at all. For the same reason that Tim Duncan and Bruce Bowen are not being suspended for leaving the bench, Amare and Boris should not be. They changed their minds, did not further incite the conduct, and returned to their bench. The league is ignoring the goal behind the rule and merely enforcing the rule in its strictest form. It is unfortunate that the NBA front office has decided to strictly enforce this rule rather than to applaud Amare and Boris for making a better decision to return to their bench. We should reward players for good decisions. Was leaving the bench a mistake? Yes, but nearly everyone has an instinctive reaction to jump up and protect an innocent victim of assault. junkmail787: May 16, 2007 12:25:03 PM | |
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