Pflugerville Ag
05-16-2007, 05:35 PM
Great story by The Sport's Guy on what is going on in the NBA...
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/070516&sportCat=nba
Three incidents/story lines from this year's playoffs inadvertently illustrated the deeper dilemna here:
1. Let's say you're one of the best seven players on the Phoenix Suns. You love Nash -- he's your emotional leader, your meal ticket to the Finals, the ideal teammate and someone who makes you happy to play basketball every day for a living. He's killing himself to win a championship. His nose was split open in Game 1. His back bothers him to the point that he has to lie down on the sidelines during breaks. He's battling a real cheap-shot artist (Bruce Bowen) who's trying to shove and trip him on every play. But he keeps coming and coming, and eventually, everyone follows suit. Just as things were falling apart in Game 4 and you were staring at the end of your season, he willed you back into the game and saved the day.
Suddenly, he gets body-checked into a press table for no real reason on an especially cheap play. You're standing 20 feet away. Instinctively, you run a few steps towards the guy who did it -- after all, your meal ticket is lying on the court in a crumpled heap -- before remembering that you can't leave your bench. So you go back and watch everything else unfold from there. Twenty-four hours later, you get suspended for Game 5 because your instincts as a teammate kicked in for 1.7 seconds.
Think about how dumb this is. What kind of league penalizes a teammate for reacting like a good teammate after his franchise player just got decked? Imagine you're playing pickup at a park, you're leading a game 10-3, your buddy is driving for the winning layup, and and some stranger clotheslines your buddy from behind and knocks him into the metal pole. Do you react? Do you take a couple of steps towards him? I bet you do. For the NBA to pretend they can create a fairy-tale league where these reactions can be removed from somebody's DNA -- almost like a chemical castration -- I mean, how stupid is that?
2. One of the running debates of these playoffs: Is Bruce Bowen a cheap player? I love the fact that anyone's actually debating this -- if your answer is "no," or your answer is "I'm not sure," then you've obviously never played basketball in your life. Bruce Bowen is a cheap player. There's no debate. He's not some clumsy power forward who can't stay out of his own way (like Mark Madsen), or even some uncoordinated center who can't remember to keep his elbows near his body (like Shawn Bradley). He's a world-class athlete who has complete control over every inch of his body at all times.
As anyone who's ever played basketball knows, with the exception of clumsy people who probably shouldn't be playing in the first place, there are no accidents on a basketball court. Your feet just don't coincidentally land under someone else's feet as they're shooting a jump shot, and you don't just coincidentally kick someone in the calf as they're going up for a layup or dunk. These things don't just happen. They don't. The only room for error happens when someone's trying to block a fastbreak layup or dunk, takes a roundhouse swipe and inadvertently ends up hitting his opponent's head instead of the ball (like we saw with Matt Barnes when he clocked Matt Harpring Tuesday night). When Jason Richardson nails Memo Okur at the end of Game 4 because he's pissed that Okur was driving at the tail end of a guaranteed win, or Baron Davis elbows Derek Fisher in the same game because he's ticked that the Warriors blew a winnable game ... those aren't accidents.
Anyway, for a world-class athlete with exceptional coordination, Bruce Bowen sure seems to have a lot of "accidents." They happen because of his style -- best described as "organized, physical chaos" -- and because he deliberately bends the rules for a competitive advantage. When he was breaking into the league, Bowen played for the Celtics from 1997 to 1999, back when I was living in Boston and attending nearly every game. He was just as good defensively back then -- quicker, even -- but couldn't shoot to save his life (41 percent his first year, 28 percent his second year), and more importantly, he was a soft player. Opponents pushed him around, refs didn't give him any respect, even his own coach (Rick Pitino) screamed at him constantly. Since Bowen seemed like such a nice guy, and he tried so freaking hard, everyone who attended those games found themselves feeling sorry for him. As gifted as he was defensively, I never imagined him making it because of his dreadful shooting and beaten-down, little-kid-getting-picked-on-in-class demeanor. He just needed one person to believe in him ... and Rick Pitino wasn't it.
When he finally made it in San Antonio a few years later, I wasn't shocked because there's always a place in the NBA for someone with a specific skill (whether it's long-range shooting, rebounding, defense or whatever), but I was shocked by his much-improved 3-point shooting (44 percent in 2003?????) and newfound intensity. Watching him hound offensive players was like watching Beecher torment Schillinger after he finally snapped in "Oz." Where did this come from??? Suddenly, Bowen was willing to bend the rules, trip guys as they landed after jump shots, bump them when they weren't looking and basically do anything to get into their heads, all while doing the whole "Wait, I'm in trouble??? What????" routine and pretending to be shocked any time anyone threatened to kick his ass. Which happens every couple of months. There's no doubt in my mind -- absolutely none -- that at some point between Boston and San Antonio, Bruce Bowen decided to do whatever it took to remain in the NBA. Even if it meant becoming a dirty player.
Now here's where the NBA failed: For a league that professes to be concerned about dirty play and any situation that could lead to a brawl, the league has curiously looked the other way with the single dirtiest player in the league. If he pulled this crap on a pickup court, or even in college intramurals, somebody would have punched Bowen in the face and broken his jaw. In the NBA? He gets to keep doing his thing and putting other players in danger. In the Phoenix series alone, he tripped Stoudemire from behind on a dunk in Game 2, kneed Nash in the groin in Game 3 and tried to knock Nash off balance in Game 5 as they were running back upcourt (causing a frustrated Nash to elbow him in the chops). The league penalizes two Phoenix stars for instinctively running towards an injured teammate, but they don't penalize a perpetually dirty player who's eventually going to trigger an ugly brawl before the end of his career?
How the hell does that make sense?
In the current NBA, you can't commit a hard foul, you can't trash-talk another player, you can't pull your shirt up after a roof-raising dunk, you can't protect a teammate who just got knocked into a press table. We have these rules -- I'm guessing -- because any of those actions can lead to an ugly fight. Ever since the Bad Boys Pistons and Riley's Knicks tried to turn the NBA into the WWF in the late-'80s and early-'90s, nearly every rule change was created to prevent ugly incidents, even if some of those rule changes compromised the competitiveness of the league in the process. Well, if that's the case, how could the league allow Bruce Bowen to keep running amok with no repercussions? Can you think of a better candidate to trigger an ugly fight some day than Bruce Bowen? Why do they allow him to keep doing what he's doing? Seriously, does the NBA have a clue?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/070516&sportCat=nba
Three incidents/story lines from this year's playoffs inadvertently illustrated the deeper dilemna here:
1. Let's say you're one of the best seven players on the Phoenix Suns. You love Nash -- he's your emotional leader, your meal ticket to the Finals, the ideal teammate and someone who makes you happy to play basketball every day for a living. He's killing himself to win a championship. His nose was split open in Game 1. His back bothers him to the point that he has to lie down on the sidelines during breaks. He's battling a real cheap-shot artist (Bruce Bowen) who's trying to shove and trip him on every play. But he keeps coming and coming, and eventually, everyone follows suit. Just as things were falling apart in Game 4 and you were staring at the end of your season, he willed you back into the game and saved the day.
Suddenly, he gets body-checked into a press table for no real reason on an especially cheap play. You're standing 20 feet away. Instinctively, you run a few steps towards the guy who did it -- after all, your meal ticket is lying on the court in a crumpled heap -- before remembering that you can't leave your bench. So you go back and watch everything else unfold from there. Twenty-four hours later, you get suspended for Game 5 because your instincts as a teammate kicked in for 1.7 seconds.
Think about how dumb this is. What kind of league penalizes a teammate for reacting like a good teammate after his franchise player just got decked? Imagine you're playing pickup at a park, you're leading a game 10-3, your buddy is driving for the winning layup, and and some stranger clotheslines your buddy from behind and knocks him into the metal pole. Do you react? Do you take a couple of steps towards him? I bet you do. For the NBA to pretend they can create a fairy-tale league where these reactions can be removed from somebody's DNA -- almost like a chemical castration -- I mean, how stupid is that?
2. One of the running debates of these playoffs: Is Bruce Bowen a cheap player? I love the fact that anyone's actually debating this -- if your answer is "no," or your answer is "I'm not sure," then you've obviously never played basketball in your life. Bruce Bowen is a cheap player. There's no debate. He's not some clumsy power forward who can't stay out of his own way (like Mark Madsen), or even some uncoordinated center who can't remember to keep his elbows near his body (like Shawn Bradley). He's a world-class athlete who has complete control over every inch of his body at all times.
As anyone who's ever played basketball knows, with the exception of clumsy people who probably shouldn't be playing in the first place, there are no accidents on a basketball court. Your feet just don't coincidentally land under someone else's feet as they're shooting a jump shot, and you don't just coincidentally kick someone in the calf as they're going up for a layup or dunk. These things don't just happen. They don't. The only room for error happens when someone's trying to block a fastbreak layup or dunk, takes a roundhouse swipe and inadvertently ends up hitting his opponent's head instead of the ball (like we saw with Matt Barnes when he clocked Matt Harpring Tuesday night). When Jason Richardson nails Memo Okur at the end of Game 4 because he's pissed that Okur was driving at the tail end of a guaranteed win, or Baron Davis elbows Derek Fisher in the same game because he's ticked that the Warriors blew a winnable game ... those aren't accidents.
Anyway, for a world-class athlete with exceptional coordination, Bruce Bowen sure seems to have a lot of "accidents." They happen because of his style -- best described as "organized, physical chaos" -- and because he deliberately bends the rules for a competitive advantage. When he was breaking into the league, Bowen played for the Celtics from 1997 to 1999, back when I was living in Boston and attending nearly every game. He was just as good defensively back then -- quicker, even -- but couldn't shoot to save his life (41 percent his first year, 28 percent his second year), and more importantly, he was a soft player. Opponents pushed him around, refs didn't give him any respect, even his own coach (Rick Pitino) screamed at him constantly. Since Bowen seemed like such a nice guy, and he tried so freaking hard, everyone who attended those games found themselves feeling sorry for him. As gifted as he was defensively, I never imagined him making it because of his dreadful shooting and beaten-down, little-kid-getting-picked-on-in-class demeanor. He just needed one person to believe in him ... and Rick Pitino wasn't it.
When he finally made it in San Antonio a few years later, I wasn't shocked because there's always a place in the NBA for someone with a specific skill (whether it's long-range shooting, rebounding, defense or whatever), but I was shocked by his much-improved 3-point shooting (44 percent in 2003?????) and newfound intensity. Watching him hound offensive players was like watching Beecher torment Schillinger after he finally snapped in "Oz." Where did this come from??? Suddenly, Bowen was willing to bend the rules, trip guys as they landed after jump shots, bump them when they weren't looking and basically do anything to get into their heads, all while doing the whole "Wait, I'm in trouble??? What????" routine and pretending to be shocked any time anyone threatened to kick his ass. Which happens every couple of months. There's no doubt in my mind -- absolutely none -- that at some point between Boston and San Antonio, Bruce Bowen decided to do whatever it took to remain in the NBA. Even if it meant becoming a dirty player.
Now here's where the NBA failed: For a league that professes to be concerned about dirty play and any situation that could lead to a brawl, the league has curiously looked the other way with the single dirtiest player in the league. If he pulled this crap on a pickup court, or even in college intramurals, somebody would have punched Bowen in the face and broken his jaw. In the NBA? He gets to keep doing his thing and putting other players in danger. In the Phoenix series alone, he tripped Stoudemire from behind on a dunk in Game 2, kneed Nash in the groin in Game 3 and tried to knock Nash off balance in Game 5 as they were running back upcourt (causing a frustrated Nash to elbow him in the chops). The league penalizes two Phoenix stars for instinctively running towards an injured teammate, but they don't penalize a perpetually dirty player who's eventually going to trigger an ugly brawl before the end of his career?
How the hell does that make sense?
In the current NBA, you can't commit a hard foul, you can't trash-talk another player, you can't pull your shirt up after a roof-raising dunk, you can't protect a teammate who just got knocked into a press table. We have these rules -- I'm guessing -- because any of those actions can lead to an ugly fight. Ever since the Bad Boys Pistons and Riley's Knicks tried to turn the NBA into the WWF in the late-'80s and early-'90s, nearly every rule change was created to prevent ugly incidents, even if some of those rule changes compromised the competitiveness of the league in the process. Well, if that's the case, how could the league allow Bruce Bowen to keep running amok with no repercussions? Can you think of a better candidate to trigger an ugly fight some day than Bruce Bowen? Why do they allow him to keep doing what he's doing? Seriously, does the NBA have a clue?