East Coast Bias: NBA Fun And Excitement

Oh are the next couple of days going to be fun.

For the four people who haven’t seen this yet, the Knicks and the Nuggets were involved in a full court brawl on Saturday night. While the NBA has aggressively been removing the clips from YouTube, the ESPN recap is located here. The brawl ended with 10 players ejected (everyone on the court when it started), one minute left in the game, and ESPN and Fox Sports with material for the entire week.

And the funny part of the whole thing: JR Smith should have known it was coming, should have known better, and should have shut his mouth and took his free throws.

With 1:15 left in the game and a 19-point lead, the Nuggets still had their starters in. Not only did they have their starters in but went into a fast break off a turnover. As Smith charged the lane for a lay-up, Mardy Collins came up behind him and fouled him”¦ hard. JR Smith took exception to the foul and started a confrontation. It ended with Carmelo Anthony throwing a girly slap-punch at Collins and running away. Some would say: “ran away like a girl,” but I won’t insult girls.

You know how sometimes, in baseball, a guy steals a base with a ten run lead and later, when that guy is up again, he takes a fastball to ribs? This was that”¦ pretty much. The Nuggets had the Knicks beat and were running up the score. This was bound to happen. Had JR Smith took the steal and pulled up at half court and let the 24 seconds run off, nothing would have happened. The Knicks took exception to them running up the score and, since the Knicks really have nothing to lose anymore, sent a Pistons-esque message: we might suck, but do NOT embarrass us. Do you have any idea what Charles Barkley would have done to JR Smith in the same situation or, God forbid, Charles Oakley? JR Smith wouldn’t need to be suspended because something would be broken. Charles Barkley would knock people into the crowd for trying to take a charge, never mind someone trying to embarrass his team. Looking at the video, you’ll see a hard foul that wasn’t entirely clean, but certainly no worse than any run of the mill, one-game suspension-drawing, flagrant foul.

Now the media wants to answer the burning question: did Isiah Thomas order the hard foul Tony Soprano-style. The answer: he didn’t have to. Frankly, Smith got off light. The funny thing is: if it comes out that Isiah DID order a hard foul, in a silly sort of way, it will help his image in New York. Knicks fans will interpret it as “passion,” regardless of how the rest of the league, or the rest of the league’s fans, see it.

What’s the fallout from this going to be?

Well, in 2004, Stephen Jackson and Jermaine O’Neal got themselves 30 and 25 games, respectively, for punching fans. Ben Wallace, who only punched Ron Artest in that same brawl, got six games. The problem for Carmelo, the league’s leading scorer, is that Stern has gone insane in trying to clean up the NBA’s image since that melee. I would not be surprised to Carmelo gone for somewhere between 10 and 20 games. JR Smith, for not just shutting his trap and taking the foul line, will probably get 5-10. Nate Robinson, who really escalated the thing from “disagreement” to “melee”, will likely come out with the least punishment. For the Knicks, the suspensions are meaningless. For the Nuggets, losing thirty points a game for the next month could be enough to cost them a playoff berth in a hyper-competitive Western Conference. Currently, they’re four games back in their division and, if the playoffs ended today, would be the 8-seed overall. In a conference destined to receive Allan Iverson in the next few days, the balance of power could easily shift and create a deficit the Nuggets won’t be able to recover from.

In the media, you’ll be reading a lot of sentences prefaced with “this has nothing to do with race, but”¦” as they present a bunch of arguments that have everything to do with race.

Scoop Jackson will almost certainly tell us that “fights happen in hockey all the time but no one cares because they’re white.” While the real reason is no one cares because no one watches hockey. And hockey has adopted fighting as part of the sport as long as a third person doesn’t get involved.

In public, a bunch of people will tell you this is why they don’t watch the NBA, because the league is full of thugs and assholes when, really, they couldn’t name five players in the league and, if they could, they’d name Allen Iverson and Ron Artest. To these people, ask them if they can name eight NBA players arrested this year. I can name eight people on one NFL team. These people are the same folks who will tell you that the NBA sucks now, while not having watched an NBA game since Jordan retired. It’s ridiculous.

When the suspension comes out, it will be both too short and too long depending on whom you ask. Some people will want Carmelo out for the season (which is ridiculous) while some will think five games is enough (also ridiculous).

What it should be? Anthony should probably be suspended for about 15 games for throwing a sucker punch, with an additional 5 games for scampering away (as an aside, he’s lucky that someone pulled Jared Jeffries down. Carmelo was about three seconds from getting ruined). Mardy Collins should get one game for a certainly flagrant foul and a free chance to punch Carmelo in the face. JR Smith and Nate Robinson should probably get 6 or 7 each for escalating the whole thing.

Lesson here being: don’t run up the score with a minute left.