I know...it's morally wrong, and too much of it/going into the stands is very inappropriate, but NBA fights are what make the season interesting. Now that the TNT analysts started joking about "stick and move," the cowardly sucker punch thrown by Melo, I think it's safe to say this one has been dealt with and David Stern shouldn't worry too much about losing many fans.
I remember the coolest moments in NBA history being fight-driven:
Sir Charles taking Shaq out with his own sucker punch,
The Knicks-Heat brawl in the playoffs,
Malone-Rodman,
Shawn Braley being suplexed by that little guy,
I loved it all. This is America and we wouldn't pay for it if it were any other way.
Last edited by phxspurfan; 12-21-2006 at 10:05 PM.
You have GOT to be kidding me! In today's NBA, fights like what happened last Friday as MSG is REALLY bad for the NBA, especially with all the blanket racial stigmas the American public, and the American media, puts on the league. I can go on forever about this, but I won't.
You are joking right, right? That incident could have ruined everything the league has been trying since the last fight to repair it's image, especially with Melo involved, who is one of the leagues rising young stars and one of it's "new faces of the game".
That fight was disgusting and terrible for the league.
The racial thing is bull - NFL players, NHL players, and MLB players have brawls all of the time. White, Black, Hispanic - , even Chan Ho Park karate kicked a guy who charged the mound. They are all thugs...
I wouldn't mind the fighting so much if any of these guys could actually fight. They are some of the worst fighters I have ever seen - nothing but wild, inaccurate, looping punches and lunges. The fights are so bad I can't believe these people are actually sober. Show me two guys squaring off on an NBA court who can actually fight a tactical fist fight and I'll happily watch.
at what point did fighting become so morally outrageous? the anger over fighting is just hilarious to me. it's quite obvious that there's racism underlying all of this. in the mlb and nhl, fighting is no big deal. but when it's a bunch of black athletes, all of a sudden, these people are thugs.
i grew up in the 80s and fights were a common occurrence in sports. it was no big deal and it still isn't, except to the lilly-whites getting their panties in a bunch.
December 21, 2006
Sports of The Times
As Times Change, Fighting Remains Part of the Game
By GEORGE VECSEY
Go figure. That nasty brawl at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night — which evinced such major hand-wringing all around — has worked wonders for both teams.
The Denver Nuggets not only pulled the trigger on the Allen Iverson deal, but they also managed a snow cancellation until A. I. is good and ready to carry the load while Carmelo Anthony serves his 15-game suspension.
The Knicks, the other party in the fight, have now won two straight games with stunning plays at the buzzer, including last night, when David Lee tipped in a perfectly lofted pass by Jamal Crawford with one-tenth of a second left in the second overtime for a 111-109 victory over Charlotte.
After all the gloom and doom following their four suspensions, the Knicks have won by using only eight players each time. There is no logical explanation.
“Chuck Daly used to say,” Isiah Thomas said, invoking his coach and mentor on the old Pistons, “that if you stick around long enough you will see everything.’
Thomas volunteered that he fully expected some of his players to be dragging for their games tomorrow and Saturday.
“These guys will absolutely die at this intensity,” he predicted, after 58 minutes of basketball, with his five starters all going over 46 minutes.
The main thing is that the league just may have survived Saturday’s brawl, which reminded me of battles I witnessed decades ago, sometimes at the “old” Garden and sometimes at the 69th Regiment Armory, a dismal barn over on the East Side.
One constant was fisticuffs — the wild flailing of elbows, guys in tight little shorts poleaxing each other for the sheer fun of it. The league was smaller then, and teams played each other over and over again, with enough frequency to exacerbate hard feelings.
There was no such thing as “hard” fouls or “professional” fouls. Pat Riley had not invented the concept of the Inner Clothesliner. Men just walloped each other: “That’s for what you did to me last week in Fort Wayne.”
In my mind’s eye, the Knicks are always playing the Syracuse Nationals on Saturday afternoon, circa 1953. Syracuse’s resident tough guy was Wally Osterkorn, a nasty-looking dude with dark sideburns, long before Elvis and the Fonz made sideburns effetely stylish. Known as the Ox to Syracuse fans, Osterkorn later did four years for burglary before admirably straightening out his life.
In a 1995 interview with The Post-Standard of Syracuse, Osterkorn recalled how he used to harass Bob Cousy: “Hey, Bob! C’mon down the lane! I’ve got something for you!”
And some people thought Thomas invented the tactic of deciding who should go down the middle and who should not.
There was very little tsk-tsking about those ancient ruffians. Pro basketball was what it was, a struggling refugee from the dance halls and gyms of the inner city, giving employment to lanky types.
If their brawls spilled over into the sparse crowds, well, that was somebody’s hard luck, much like getting creamed with a foul at the ballpark. The players were rough but the ambiance was gentle. At Knicks games, a little old organist named Gladys Goodding played mellow chestnuts like “The Skater’s Waltz” and “In Old New York.”
There was no killer sound system, no message board, no dancing girls, all the irrelevant show-biz trappings of today — just organ music and guys in short shorts pummeling each other. I’m here to tell you, it wasn’t bad.
One day in the laboratory, David Stern invented Bird, Magic and Jordan, and all of a sudden pro basketball became too valuable to allow another case like Kermit Washington leveling Rudy Tomjanovich, or the brawl in the stands in Auburn Hills, Mich.
Stern acted wisely the other day in doling out the penalties. Anthony can complain about his 15-game suspension, but the fact is that he went looking for trouble, throwing a sucker punch, then retreating. Now an in-flight magazine with a feature article on Anthony has been withdrawn by Northwest Airlines. This isn’t a sport anymore. It’s a brand.
•
I have trouble with the perception that the public is somehow turned off by fighting in the N.B.A. because the players are predominately African-American. The brawls I witnessed back in the early ’50s involved predominately white players, and I don’t remember there being any outcry about white violence.
What is different is the manufactured noise and artificial fury these days. When the lights dim and the loudspeakers blare and the laser spotlights rotate, the league is more or less prodding the players — and the crowd — into a heightened state, people expecting more thrills, more muscle, for their buck.
Stern, quite sternly, has put everybody on notice that they must know when the anger must stop. It isn’t that easy, when 10 large men operating at close quarters, with testosterone and tempers high.
Sometimes the game has eerie reflections of other generations. The Iverson trade could produce one of the best pairings in the league since Oscar Robertson joined Lew Alcindor in Milwaukee, to help win a championship. Now the decimated Knicks have won two straight. Go figure.
E-mail: [email protected]
yeah yeah whatever all of you say you know youd welcome another highlight of shawn bradley ge ng bodyslammed
It's not what we think, it's what the folks who pay real money to the NBA that matter.
Not in basketball, no.
Watch PRIDE if you want to see a fight. This is basketball.
Why do so many people have such a short attention spans that they require
violence to keep them interested?
I don't understand how it's bad for the NBA?
Fights like that are plastered all over the news, all over the papers, all over Sports Center and people want to find out what the repercussions will be. They light up message boards and people tune in to see the next time these teams play.
I think it's a fine line though, nobody wants to see another incident like Detroit or Washington/Tomjanovich....
These are different times, after the Pistons-Pacers brawl, the NBA has been overly conscious about its image.
I remember during Jordan's era when I was like nine, players getting in each other's grills used to be pretty funny and I barely remember any big media thing about them. The NY-Denver thing was relatively tame, a couple cheap shots after a hard foul. It was more idiotic than shocking. (like the Pistons-Pacers one was)
Besides, like some of the above posters said, hoping to see some violence in a basketball game is a pretty immature kick because it isn't Hockey and there's a different kind of sportsmanship involved. I mean, I wouldn't want any of our Spurs getting mixed up in that mentalilty. Basketball's interesting enough as it is. We don't need stupid fights interrupting the game!
I, personally, don't mind seeing a little scrap and some jawing as long as nobody gets seriously injured.
Maybe between lesser players, or hated players, but generally I don't like the technicals or when good players get ejected.
Even if they're hated it takes the fun out of the compe ion.
If you took the things that happened in the nineties, and had Stern review them by todays standards, you'd probably double the ammount of ejections and quadruple the ammount of technicals, maybe sixtuple...
i don't understand the big deal with at few scraps here and there. , i know when i play a couple of hard cheap shot fouls have me ready to knock a head off. there is no way you can play this sport and never expect some kind of skirmish to pop off. furthermore, most b-ball players can't fight worth a anyway. anyone remember the ZO LJ fight a few years back. 2 of the toughest looking players in the league fought like some pansies...and jeff VG swinging from Zo's leg...just comical
lol, wonder if there'll ever be a brawl involving the spurs, the spurs might finally get the media's attention
You didn't see that?
VG will always be remembered for that more than anything else...
lol, lew alcindor, we dont know dat guy anymore
LMAO...you can't really call that garbage a "fight"...
Even hockey fights are a joke...NBA and MLB is even worse...and NFL fights usually includes players wearing helmets...
Watch some mixed martial arts if you want to see a fight...
Well they certainly weren't getting along lovely, that's for sure...
Fights make the game interesting
Is Stern's strictness have some "racial profiling", as Vecsey suggests,
ie, PWB, "playing while black (and tatooed and braided and head-banded)" ?
[link removedl]
Last edited by ChumpDumper; 12-22-2006 at 01:51 PM. Reason: Links to unauthorized NBA video are not allowed.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
