Stern must relax fight rule to avoid future ruin
by Ian O'Connor
David Stern is a smart man who needs to get rid of a dumb rule. This rule might have cost two teams an NBA championship, so Stern should act before it rains a river of injustice on a third.
The "immediate vicinity of the bench" mandate is in place to prevent players from wandering onto the court and elevating a skirmish from Defcon 5 to Defcon 1. Of course, the spirit of the law makes all kinds of sense.
A league haunted by a couple of violent episodes from its past — the Malice at the Palace and the Kermit Washington/Rudy T punch — wants to ensure that basketball never subscribes to this primitive article of hockey's faith: Fighting is a part of the game.
Fine. But suspending any player that leaves his bench, regardless of cir stance, allows for the spirit of the rule to be trampled by the letter of it, making a mockery of what should be a fair and square athletic event.
Lamar Odom was suspended under Stern's ordinance after Portland's Rudy Fernandez was clipped from the sky by the Lakers' Trevor Ariza. Odom bodied up to Brandon Roy, who had gotten in Ariza's face, before Lakers assistant Kurt Rambis shoved Odom back to the bench.
So Odom will sit out Wednesday's game in Houston, and perhaps rightfully so. Though he didn't get physical, Odom did act in something of an agitated way.
I wouldn't have suspended him. I would've hit him with a fine and a warning that next time around I wouldn't be so kind.
But this was a regular-season game, not a playoff game, and Odom's conduct did straddle the suspend/don't suspend fence. If Stern wanted to take the tough-guy approach here and cost the Lakers a game they might need to secure home-court advantage in the Finals, so be it.
"We are disappointed with and we disagree with the league's ruling," said Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak.
He's paid to say that. And David Stern's paid to protect and preserve the integrity of his sport.
This rule doesn't help him toward that end.
The Trail Blazers' Rudy Fernandez is taken from the court after being fouled by the Lakers' Trevor Ariza on Monday. (Rick Bowner / Associated Press)
The Odom suspension serves as a cold reminder that another NBA playoff series could be marred — even determined — by a law that cuts no slack for the human condition. Stern can't let that happen, not after the Suns and the Knicks were sentenced to postseason deaths over misdemeanor traffic violations.
Flash back to 1997, Knicks holding a 3-1 series lead over the Heat but on the verge of losing Game 5. Charlie Ward and P.J. Brown got tangled up on the baseline, Brown flipped Ward head over heels into a row of photographers near the Knicks' bench, and Patrick Ewing and a small posse of fellow stars move in Brown's direction.
The Knicks had won 57 games that year, and had swept Charlotte in the first round. They'd beaten the Jordan Bulls in Chicago at the end of the regular season, and felt they had their best chance since '93 of finally ghostbusting their old, reliable haunt. But Stern suspended Patrick Ewing and Allan Houston for Game 6, and Larry Johnson and John Starks for Game 7, all for leaving the bench. It was the worst trade in NBA history — P.J. Brown for Charlie Ward and four past, present or future All-Stars.
The Ewing suspension was unforgivable, as the franchise player took a few steps into the restricted zone, not one of them shaped by bad intentions.
"I'm totally ticked off," Ewing said the following night. "I'm getting a raw deal. All I was doing was walking out there and I get suspended. They're killing me."
His coach, Jeff Van Gundy, did Ewing one better. "I liken it to Charlie being on the street with guys he's working with and a guy 10 inches taller and 80 pounds heavier coming up and body-slamming him to the ground," Van Gundy said. "Those workers tend to his aid and they're known as heroes or good Samaritans.
"In the NBA, you get suspended."
Miami won Games 6 and 7, and lost to the eventual champion Bulls in the next round.
Ewing? He retired with 10 bare fingers.
A dozen years later, Steve Nash is staring at the same cruel fate. His best shot at the elusive ring came in the 2007 matchup with San Antonio, another series flipped on its ear by Stern's playbook.
At the close of Game 4, with the Suns about to make it a 2-2 proposition, Robert Horry delivered a hard body check to Nash that knocked him into the scorer's table and down to the floor. Horry's was a dirty move all the way, punctuated by a forearm shiver.
Reacting to the sight of their flattened quarterback, Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw stepped away from their bench and onto the court.
"Phoenix may be coming of age as a franchise," Steve Kerr, the TV analyst that night, said as Nash was picked off the floor. "Fighting through a game that they really didn't have going in their favor."
Yes, the Game 4 triumph felt like a seminal moment for the Suns, who had never won a le.
That was until Stern's lead disciplinarian, Stu Jackson, announced that Stoudemire and Diaw would receive one-game suspensions, and that Phoenix would not be coming of age after all. Horry's pro-wrestling act was rewarded in Vince McMahon style.
"The purpose of the rule," Jackson said then, "is to prevent the escalation of these types of incidents and in turn protect the health and safety of our players and diminish the chance of serious injury (for) our players."
The Spurs won Games 5 and 6, beat a Utah team that Phoenix would've beaten, and then swept a Cleveland team that the Suns would've swept for the le.
So those bogus suspensions of Stoudemire and Diaw — both used to cover Tim Duncan — dramatically altered the course of Suns history. If Mike D'Antoni wins the 2007 championship, he's still in Phoenix with a long contract extension, and Shaquille O'Neal never lands there.
Whatever. Stern can't right those past wrongs, but he doesn't have to repeat them, either. He needs a sudden attack of common sense.
Remove the automatic suspensions from the books, and assume the responsibility of judging these sideline wanderings on a case-by-case basis.
If Stern sees a clear aggressor leaving the bench in search of a fight, he should go ahead and nail him. But if a player concerned for a teammate takes a few benign steps toward the scene, especially in the playoffs, Stern needs to give that man a pass.
The films don't lie, remember? Intent isn't that hard to determine, not for a smart commissioner who can't afford to govern with an incredibly dumb rule.
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