duncan228
05-07-2009, 04:42 PM
Beefed up in-game penalties the best way to remedy rough play (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=beefedupingamepenaltiest&prov=tsn&type=lgns)
By Sean Deveney - SportingNews
LOS ANGELES—Ron Artest thinks Kobe Bryant should have been tossed from Wednesday night's Game 2. Why? Because Bryant elbowed him in the throat as he was boxing out Artest for a rebound in the fourth quarter, and Artest felt it was intentional. If it was, that would probably mean Bryant has eyes in the back of his head, or, at least, has extraordinarily precise elbow-aim. Artest's throat is about five inches by two inches. To be able place one's elbow in that small a space while looking in the other direction and getting pushed in the back … well, that's talent.
But, believing the elbow was thrown intentionally, Artest did something silly. He ran the length of the floor to inform Bryant that he would not stand for such actions.
"I understand it's the playoffs," Artest said. "I remember back home in the neighborhood there were games like that. One time, one of my friends, he was playing basketball and they were winning the game. It was so competitive, they broke off a piece of leg from a table and they threw it and it went right through his heart and he died right on the court. So I'm accustomed to playing basketball really rough."
Hmm. OK. Just so we're clear here, Bryant's elbow caught Artest in the throat, and replays show (to me, at least) it was inadvertent. Bryant did not throw an elbow that pierced Artest's throat. He did not break off any table legs or impale Artest. It was two guys getting tangled up, and then it was Artest losing his cool, menacing Bryant right in front of referee Joey Crawford (the last guy you want to dare to give you a technical foul).
It was a dumb act on Artest's part, and part of a series of dumb acts by players throughout the postseason, whether it's Rajon Rondo flinging an opponent into the scorer's table, Dwight Howard chucking a vicious elbow at Sam Dalembert, or Rafer Alston taking a swipe at Eddie House. Fellas, cool it!
What's going on here? Is it the pressure? Is it the coaching? Is it that there's too much violence in video games?
"I think you're seeing teams playing with championship intensity," former coach and ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy told SportingNews.com, "but not with championship poise."
This has gone beyond a loss of poise, and into the realm of a pattern of dirty, dumb play all over the league. Even Derek Fisher, a supposedly wise veteran, committed a brainless play in Game 2, giving Luis Scola an unnecessary check that sent Scola sprawling and got Fisher ejected. Fisher explained that he simply misjudged the distance he had on the screen. If that's the case, why did he lower his shoulder and jam it well into Scola's sternum? It looked like perfect timing, actually.
The problem seems to be one of punishment. No one's really afraid of the dean of discipline, Stu Jackson, anymore.
"The NBA has to think long and hard about how it does its discipline," Van Gundy said. "We've seen a change in penalties, and the league has tried different things. But we're not seeing a change in behavior, and ultimately, that is what the punishment is there for. To change behavior."
That's been borne out in these playoffs. But I, for one, don't want to see the NBA playoffs decided by who is suspended and who is not suspended. Ideally, we'd watch basketball games played by the players who helped their teams make it this deep into the playoffs. Van Gundy agrees, and has some ideas on how to alter things.
"For one thing, I don't know why, if there is a flagrant foul or a technical foul, why do you have to shoot the free throws to get the points?" Van Gundy said. "Just give them the points. In football, if you get called for holding, it's 10 yards. They don't make you complete a pass for it, you just get it. Give one point for a technical, two points for a flagrant and four points for a flagrant-2. You need more punishment like that to change the behavior."
In other words, the league needs to beef up its in-game penalties as a way to deter stupid, overly physical plays while avoiding turning the playoffs into a suspension-fest. And when suspensions are called for, maybe there's a way to tinker with how they're done so that they can be carried out without being devastating to a team's chances.
"I wish we had a system like they do in baseball," Van Gundy said. "A guy does something, he gets suspended, then he can appeal it and kind of drag it out for a while during the appeal process. The league office can hear the other side and can cut it down or keep it the same. Or the player can appeal it, say, through the end of a series and drop the appeal at the start of the next series, so he misses Game 1 and not Game 7. That way, the league still gets to do what it needs to do in terms of punishment, but it does not ruin a series.
"Really, think about it. It's only in basketball. Have you ever seen a World Series or a Super Bowl where the best players are suspended?"
Now that we've got instant replay in limited form in the NBA, why should refs not be allowed to look at plays to determine which are flagrant fouls and which are technicals? They can look at the replay for flagrant-2 fouls, but not on others. That seems illogical.
"They're such game-changing plays, they should look at them," Van Gundy said. "Probably 90 percent of them would stay the same, but those other 10 percent can make a big difference. And it is not like it would take all that much time. Get it right. It's silly."
There are, indeed, some silly quirks in the NBA system of crime and punishment. But, of course, we would not need to be concerned about this if the players involved were not making such silly decisions in the first place.
By Sean Deveney - SportingNews
LOS ANGELES—Ron Artest thinks Kobe Bryant should have been tossed from Wednesday night's Game 2. Why? Because Bryant elbowed him in the throat as he was boxing out Artest for a rebound in the fourth quarter, and Artest felt it was intentional. If it was, that would probably mean Bryant has eyes in the back of his head, or, at least, has extraordinarily precise elbow-aim. Artest's throat is about five inches by two inches. To be able place one's elbow in that small a space while looking in the other direction and getting pushed in the back … well, that's talent.
But, believing the elbow was thrown intentionally, Artest did something silly. He ran the length of the floor to inform Bryant that he would not stand for such actions.
"I understand it's the playoffs," Artest said. "I remember back home in the neighborhood there were games like that. One time, one of my friends, he was playing basketball and they were winning the game. It was so competitive, they broke off a piece of leg from a table and they threw it and it went right through his heart and he died right on the court. So I'm accustomed to playing basketball really rough."
Hmm. OK. Just so we're clear here, Bryant's elbow caught Artest in the throat, and replays show (to me, at least) it was inadvertent. Bryant did not throw an elbow that pierced Artest's throat. He did not break off any table legs or impale Artest. It was two guys getting tangled up, and then it was Artest losing his cool, menacing Bryant right in front of referee Joey Crawford (the last guy you want to dare to give you a technical foul).
It was a dumb act on Artest's part, and part of a series of dumb acts by players throughout the postseason, whether it's Rajon Rondo flinging an opponent into the scorer's table, Dwight Howard chucking a vicious elbow at Sam Dalembert, or Rafer Alston taking a swipe at Eddie House. Fellas, cool it!
What's going on here? Is it the pressure? Is it the coaching? Is it that there's too much violence in video games?
"I think you're seeing teams playing with championship intensity," former coach and ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy told SportingNews.com, "but not with championship poise."
This has gone beyond a loss of poise, and into the realm of a pattern of dirty, dumb play all over the league. Even Derek Fisher, a supposedly wise veteran, committed a brainless play in Game 2, giving Luis Scola an unnecessary check that sent Scola sprawling and got Fisher ejected. Fisher explained that he simply misjudged the distance he had on the screen. If that's the case, why did he lower his shoulder and jam it well into Scola's sternum? It looked like perfect timing, actually.
The problem seems to be one of punishment. No one's really afraid of the dean of discipline, Stu Jackson, anymore.
"The NBA has to think long and hard about how it does its discipline," Van Gundy said. "We've seen a change in penalties, and the league has tried different things. But we're not seeing a change in behavior, and ultimately, that is what the punishment is there for. To change behavior."
That's been borne out in these playoffs. But I, for one, don't want to see the NBA playoffs decided by who is suspended and who is not suspended. Ideally, we'd watch basketball games played by the players who helped their teams make it this deep into the playoffs. Van Gundy agrees, and has some ideas on how to alter things.
"For one thing, I don't know why, if there is a flagrant foul or a technical foul, why do you have to shoot the free throws to get the points?" Van Gundy said. "Just give them the points. In football, if you get called for holding, it's 10 yards. They don't make you complete a pass for it, you just get it. Give one point for a technical, two points for a flagrant and four points for a flagrant-2. You need more punishment like that to change the behavior."
In other words, the league needs to beef up its in-game penalties as a way to deter stupid, overly physical plays while avoiding turning the playoffs into a suspension-fest. And when suspensions are called for, maybe there's a way to tinker with how they're done so that they can be carried out without being devastating to a team's chances.
"I wish we had a system like they do in baseball," Van Gundy said. "A guy does something, he gets suspended, then he can appeal it and kind of drag it out for a while during the appeal process. The league office can hear the other side and can cut it down or keep it the same. Or the player can appeal it, say, through the end of a series and drop the appeal at the start of the next series, so he misses Game 1 and not Game 7. That way, the league still gets to do what it needs to do in terms of punishment, but it does not ruin a series.
"Really, think about it. It's only in basketball. Have you ever seen a World Series or a Super Bowl where the best players are suspended?"
Now that we've got instant replay in limited form in the NBA, why should refs not be allowed to look at plays to determine which are flagrant fouls and which are technicals? They can look at the replay for flagrant-2 fouls, but not on others. That seems illogical.
"They're such game-changing plays, they should look at them," Van Gundy said. "Probably 90 percent of them would stay the same, but those other 10 percent can make a big difference. And it is not like it would take all that much time. Get it right. It's silly."
There are, indeed, some silly quirks in the NBA system of crime and punishment. But, of course, we would not need to be concerned about this if the players involved were not making such silly decisions in the first place.