sam cassell is an alien and i love him

My dad called me yesterday about an interview he heard recently on TPT’s weekly public affairs program, Almanac, with some Minnesota sports writer who had written a new book about the culture of fighting in the NHL. TPT, the television-version of Minnesota Public Radio, is Minneapolis-St. Paul’s largest and most popular public access TV network, meaning not very large and not very popular, so you can imagine the frank and serious, yet light and politely-inquisitive way in which this interview was most likely conducted. The fact that my dad called me about an interview on Almanac, a show I couldn’t care less about, is not unusual; my dad calls me all the time (and I mean, all the time, it’s out of control), often about nothing in particular, just looking to make some conversation and say hello. What is unusual is that my dad called me about hockey, or even sports at all. My dad is decidedly not whom I received my affection and obsession for all things sports from. That distinction belongs to my mother, a self-proclaimed tomboy while growing up and a still rabid baseball fan (she still loves basketball and football, don’t worry). So the fact that a Minnesotan sports writer (”And a Jew too!”) was on Almanac talking about sports, hockey nonetheless, yet about a subject and in a way that still intrigued by dad, well, that’s something he thought I needed to hear about. This book (The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL by Ross Bernstein) apparently discusses the “rules of engagement” for fighting in an increasingly violent NHL. “I didn’t even know there could be a code behind that stuff,” said my dad. “Isn’t that interesting?” Yes, Dad, it is interesting, but for reasons that have very little to do with the NHL.

As most of the living, breathing American populace knows, a fight broke out last Saturday night between the New York Knicks and Denver Nuggets in the last two minutes of the game at New York’s famed Madison Square Garden. I commented on the fight in a post last Sunday, but didn’t see much point in discussing the fight itself. Instead, I spent most of my time lamenting the inevitable dip Carmelo Anthony, a rising star in the NBA and a prominent member of my fanasty NBA team, would take to his fantasy value and his public image as a result of his actions in said fight. Why didn’t I discuss the actual fight itself? It seems obvious to me: the fight wasn’t anything particularly newsworthy, physically no larger than your average bench-clearing brawl in MLB (a large handful of which seem to occur every season), and certainly no more violent than your average tooth-popping fistfight in the NHL (a large handful of which seem to occur every night). Unfortunately, much of the sports media, indeed much of the broader American mainstream, doesn’t seem to see it that way.

So what has the media said about the fight? Well a lot of things have been said, some good, some bad, some with nothing worthwhile to contribute at all. But for every Kelly Dwyer of CNNSI.com who asks us not to make too much of the actions of some NBA players who aren’t thugs but really just a bunch of “eccentric millionaires” and “bratty kids, full of themselves,” there are five times more journalists willing to grant upon themselves the role of judge and jury, brandishing these rogue NBA players as the morally-irredeemable hooligans they believe them to be, unfit for the public spotlight that goes along with sports stardom and potential role model positions. Consider, for example, Dwyer’s colleague at CNNSI.com, Chris Mannix, who emphatically believes that the fight committed the ludicrous sin of putting fans at physical risk (”make no mistake, that is exactly what several players did Saturday night”). Additionally, today ESPN ran a headline article on its site about Northwest Airlines pulling a magazine from its flights which featured Carmelo Anthony. In a column on his site Edgeofsports.com, liberal sportswriter Dave Ziren (and fellow Macalester grad!) lists multiple other examples of sportswriters who over-zealously cried foul in response to the fight:

Instead, we are deluged with articles about how, as a Yahoo Sports headline described it, this is really “a black eye” for the entire league. The Baltimore Sun’s Childs Walker wrote that the brawl should spark a discussion “about the sociology of the NBA.” MSNBC’s Michael Ventre opined that “the terms ‘NBA’ and ‘thuggery’ have become inextricably linked in the minds of basketball fans the world over.” The piece also calls the incident another example of “The NBA Vs. Idiots.”

I keep coming back to that Chris Mannix article, though. What shocks me more than anything is the vindictive and self-righteous attitude Mannix readily employs on behalf of the cowering masses, the NBA and sports fans across the country, who Mannix apparently believes remain in fear of events like those in the Garden on Saturday night. Mannix writes: “[The fight's participants] deserve to be struck down with an iron first, their punishment so severe that the mere thought of doing something like that again makes them cringe.” What’s even more unfortunate is that on this point, David Stern, the NBA’s commissioner and ruler-on-high, completely agrees.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Stern’s remonstrative punishment went way overboard. For engaging in the NBA’s first fight since Ray Allen and Kenyon Dooling went at it nearly a year ago, mid-January of last year to be more precise, Stern suspended Carmelo Anthony for 15 games, J.R. Smith and Nate Robinson 10 games, and a combined 12 games amongst four other suspended players. In contrast, Allen and Dooling received a suspension of 8 combined games for a fight that also apparently put fans at physical risk, if we’re to follow Mannix’s criteria, by spilling over into the front row of courtside spectators (you can watch a clip of that fight here). When Stern enacted an official age limit and dress code a couple of years ago, I welcomed the moves as subersive, smart and creative measures meant to address the NBA’s falling public image. Stern correctly recognized the negative powers of the NBA that were affecting the broader American basketball culture–obviously, violent and disturbing scenes like the “Malice at the Palace” Pistons-Pacers incident, but also capitalistic forces like shoe companies and other opportunistic, profit-obsessed businesses that were increasingly exploiting (perhaps more importantly, increasingly able to exploit) the younger generations of American basketball players–and passed new rules which tackled not just the physical, but the cultural and social aspects of the NBA in dire need of a tune-up.

With his reaction to this incident, however, it’s clear to me that Stern has lost that vision and aim, and overstepped a very delicate line from culturally-minded to culturally-reactive. In the press release announcing the NBA’s verdict, Stern cited the justification that the NBA “has set up the goal of eliminating fighting from our game.” I don’t doubt Stern’s motives, however misguided his methods may be. But it’s equally clear to me that such methods have had a markedly negative impact on the perception of this event, and perhaps similar events in the future; namely, such heavy punishments give credence to all the haters who condemn the NBA as ultimate champion in public displays of thuggery in modern America, further strengthening the allegedly “inextricable” link between the terms ‘NBA’ and ‘thuggery’ for narrow-minded analysts like the aforementioned Michael Ventre of MSNBC. It files down the scope of the NBA’s public image to a needle-thin trajectory where the players themselves are the only ones bearing responsibility, and dumbs down the league’s reputation to the barest, most fundamental of stereotypes. 

And why does this all happen? How can such a marginalization occur so easily in this democratic, civilized society? Steve Francis–of all people!–may have some idea. In an interview with the New York Post–of all newspapers!–Francis put it more bluntly than I ever could (or could dare):

“In other sports, there are incidents that are way worse than basketball,” the Knicks guard said. “So many worse things happen every game or four or five times a year, but because there are more black players in the NBA, it’s under the microscope more than baseball or hockey.”

Of course there are tons of stupid details surrounding the fight (which have been turned into excuses and half-hearted justifications): Denver coach George Karl was running up the score against the Knicks in support of his friend, former Knicks head coach, and Isiah Thomas’ archrival, Larry Brown; Isiah Thomas in response ordered a hard foul for any player that dared go into the paint for the rest of the game. But petty crap like that happens in every sport; at the worst, such moves are on par with Ozzie Guillen ordering a young relief pitcher to bean an opponent’s batter (not to mentioned Guillen’s reactionary demotion of said pitcher when the pitcher failed to carry out the ordered beaning). And the fight itself was certainly no less a spectacle than the myriad other physical altercations which occur in every major American sport (except maybe golf). Yet the NBA gets a bum wrap because its players aren’t predominantly white, because those same players are insanely rich, because its fans can get closer to the action than in any sport, because of many other reasons which Carmelo Anthony, J.R. Smith, Mardy Collins and Nate Robinson don’t deserve to be taking the full brunt of, no matter how embarassing or ridiculous their actions were last Saturday night. It’s unfortunate and reprehensible (yet still predictable) that a couple years after the cataclysmic Pacers-Pistons brawl the sports media hype machine has learned so little and seems just as incapable of recognizing such facts. But it’s an outright tragedy that the NBA’s own commissioner can’t recognize it either.