David Stern Gone Wild!

Born a Nuggets Fan has moved to Pickaxe and Roll

Crank up the late night commercials with the drunk girls committing all kinds of debauchery.  Is David Stern looking into a camera in his office and slowly pulling up his dress shirt?  It is a possibility because we have another episode of David Stern Gone Wild queued up in the DVD player.

 

Anyway, I will try to keep from beating a dead horse, or a dead playoff season, but with the Nuggets out and the Jazz sitting in the Western Conference Finals (how the Sam Hill did that happen?) awaiting the winner of the Suns/Spurs series I have to write a little more about the suspension to Amare and Diaw. 

I just listened to David Stern’s performance on The Dan Patrick Show and I was pretty shocked at his demeanor.  He was very combative, disingenuous and sarcastic.  I have no idea how many other interviews he had done to that point, I am guessing not more than a handful, but he escalated the conversation to a contentious debate immediately.  I was impressed that Dan Patrick was able to maintain his composure.  Stern made the interview very difficult from start to finish. 

Patrick tried to make the point that this was not a couple of scrubs in a mid season game, but this was an All-NBA player had been suspended form a crucial playoff game.  Stern instantly mocked him saying that he will take note next time not to apply the rule to star players even though this is a valid point that.  The situation calls for a more significant look at the rule and how it should be applied. 

Stern did say that he was not pleased with the result of the penalty and he would be happy to work with owners to change the rule if the owners so desire.  He played the victim the entire time claiming that he had no choice but to follow the rule as it was written, which he believes leaves no room for interpretation. 

Stern seems to revel in the perception that he will do the “right” thing every time based on the rules.  It does not even matter if in the short term the consequences for his league are negative.  He knew he would take the bullet and this would be an unpopular decision.  In his mind he has stood up for what is right, but it is more about what he believes the sponsors of the league want to see.  This decision was about his view of himself and how he wants to be perceived by others than about the NBA and what is best for the fans that make the league go. 

It did take courage, in a masochistic way, to implement the rule based on a strict interpretation, but it would have also taken courage to decide that Amare and Diaw could play tonight.  Doing the right thing is not always doing the hard thing.  We could have all taken umbrage that the rule did indeed work and no one from either bench entered the altercation. 

It has been pointed out in many places that it is natural to stand up for your teammates, especially you small point guard with a bad back.  Add in the fact that the Spurs (Bruce Bowen) are doing all that can be done to rough up Nash and Amare and can nay of us blame Amare and Diaw for how they reacted?  Then in a split second, they realized that they could not rush onto the court and they returned to the bench.  Did what they do in any way threaten to heighten the tensions or escalate the altercation between the two teams?  Obviously it did not.

This decision is designed to make a statement that there is no place for violence in the NBA.  Stern believes that if they stick to the strict interpretation of this rule that players will learn to sit still with their hands in their laps when any potential brouhaha is simmering.  This position is preposterous.  If no suspension had been levied, would players instantly begin running away from the immediate vicinity of their bench in order to get involved in fights?  Of course not, and that is the bottom line of this argument.  Would we be heading down a slippery slope leading the NBA to lose control of its players?  A thousand times no. 

The rule has worked and continues to work.  It worked in New York when the Nuggets and Knicks got into it and it worked Monday in San Antonio, but apparently it did not work well enough for David Stern because Amare and Diaw got too close to being to close.

In my previous post I gave a couple of alternatives that the league could have chosen in order to avert this very situation, but in looking at the rule closer, my favorite one is not an option.  I wanted to see Amare and Diaw sit out the first game of next season, but the rule states that any suspension must be served the following game, unless enough players are suspended that the team cannot field the minimum of eight players.  Talk about no room for interpretation.

The two remaining logical alternatives that the league could have worked from are Amare and Diaw did not leave the immediate vicinity of the bench, or that this was not a true altercation as no fight took place.  Either one of those would have preserved the spirit of the law and allowed the game tonight to be played at full strength.  It is clear that the term “altercation” is open for interpretation because Stu Jackson claimed in a separate interview that when Tim Duncan was on the court there was no altercation between Francisco Elson and James Jones.  I am sure we could come up with a more vague word than altercation, but it would not be easy.

It is sad that the league could not realize that they could maintain the integrity of the rule and still allow the actions of Amare and Diaw to go unpunished.  Doing so would not have caused an eruption of bench clearing brawls nor would it have ushered in a new era of violence.  It just would have preserved this series that is about all we have left to enjoy in this playoff season.  Then again, maybe
Phoenix plays out of their minds tonight and pull off a true upset that will change the balance of power and signal an end to the Spurs era. 

I guess even without Amare we all better watch tonight, you never know when history might be made.  That is what is so great about sports even when commissioners go wild.

Suspension of Common Sense

Born a Nuggets Fan has moved to Pickaxe and Roll

The NBA has frustrated its fans once again.  There were many different ways that the NBA could have avoided making the decision to suspend Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for Game 5 of what is probably the most anticipated series of the post season. 

The rule states that players cannot leave the immediate area of the bench during an altercation. 

The league could have determined that they never crossed the border for the coach’s box and thus had not left the immediate area of the bench.

The league could have determined that this was not an “altercation.”  This was the reasoning that they cited when they decided to ignore the instance where Tim Duncan walked out on the court after Francisco Elson and James Jones got in each other’s way after an Elson dunk in the first half.  If there was no altercation, why was Duncan on the floor?  He definitely was not going to the scorer’s table to check in either.  (Can everyone please stop calling for Bruce Bowen to be suspended for leaving the bench too?  All he did was reach out and pull Duncan back.  Again, I dislike Bowen as much as anyone, but being irrational like that does not forward our case.)

The league could have decided that this was not a big deal, which is accurate because it wasn’t, and ignored the rule.

Any of those arguments could be seen as inconsistent with previous league decisions (thanks for pointing that out so openly in the post game show Charles).  I can understand why the league may be hesitant to apply one of those solutions even though they should have.  Here are some other options that would not have called for Jackson and Stern to look the other way and would have kept their tough guy personas in tact.

The league could have decided that the rule would be enforced, but suspensions would not take place until the next regular season. 

If they really wanted to be tough guys, they could have decided that Duncan would be suspended for game 5 as well for leaving the bench during the “non-altercation” mentioned above.  This would have left both teams roughly equally depleted and reinforced the do not ever leave the bench during any action that could fall under the guise of an altercation for everyone.

I believe that the deciding factor for the suspensions was the fact that the NBA suspended a handful of important Knick players several years ago and they lost the series to the Heat because of it.  In a roundabout way the league probably believed that had they not punished the Suns now, the Knick fans would have felt like they had been screwed retroactively. 

There are a couple of very big differences between the Knicks’ actions and the Suns’ actions.  There actually was a fight, which is the term that should be written into the rule instead of altercation, in the instance where the Knicks were suspended.  There was no fight in the Suns/Spurs “altercation.”  More importantly, this rule was designed for teams like the Knicks who were ready to throw down at a moment’s notice, especially when the Heat were involved.  The Suns are about as far away from that type of team as possible.  Not only are the Suns not fighters, they are consistently labeled as “soft.” 

The NBA has shown that they are willing to look at other issues on a case by case basis.  Why not this one?  Fights have been largely phased out in the NBA, a great deal of the credit for that goes to the rule in question.  The fact that the league is different now and much less violent, should allow the league to bend a little on the interpretation of that rule. 

I am upset beyond words that the series has been hampered by this silly abuse of power by David Stern and Stu Jackson, but when all is said and done, the blame ultimately is at the feet of the Suns’ coaching staff.  Players are going to get fired up and want to help a teammate when they are drilled with an unnecessarily hard foul or cheap shot, but coaches are supposed to be more cerebral than that. 

The replay shows the Suns’ coaches running in the direction of the “altercation” with arms flailing and mouths agape.  It is not easy to see because all the action took place at the edge of the Suns bench, but in some replays you can see the Spurs’ bench and it is easy to notice a Spurs coach standing with his back to the action hands and feet spread out wide blocking Spurs players from leaving the immediate area of their bench. 

Ultimately, the Suns did break the rule leaving themselves open to a close minded, authoritarian decision by Jackson and Stern, but for the good of the game, a better decision could have, and should have, been applied in this situation.