arthurracoon
The Cardinal Smiles
http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/6814904
Kevin Hench / FOXSports.com
Congratulations to the San Antonio Spurs on their fourth NBA championship in the Tim Duncan era.
And congrats, too, to the NBA and its idiotic, backward, zero-tolerance sentencing guidelines for making it possible.
I suspect the Spurs would have found a way to win two of the next three games against Phoenix even if Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw had played in Game 5, but now it's a foregone conclusion.
It was a great trade for the Spurs: Robert Horry straight up for Stoudemire and Diaw.
Horry is a terrific role player and perhaps the most clutch playoff performer in league history, but at this point in his career he's just one small element of Gregg Popovich's deep rotation, and he finished 12th on the Spurs in scoring at 3.9 points a game. Stoudemire is an All-NBA first-teamer and Diaw is one of the league's most versatile players.
Even with all their weapons locked and loaded, the Suns still had precious little margin for error and needed a spectacular finish in Game 4 to level the series at two games apiece. Without their best low-post scorer (Stoudemire) and low-post passer (Diaw), the Suns are sunk.
In other words, it was a great play by Horry to body slam Steve Nash into the scorer's table and the league rewarded it accordingly. In fact, all NBA teams should employ a Bob Probert-type player for exactly these situations. Send in the goon at the end of the game to clothesline the other team's superstar in front of his bench and see how many of his teammates manage to stay in their seats with their arms folded.
Like those obscene sentencing guidelines that bind the hands of judges and make them sentence people to life in prison for writing a bad check (Texas, you can look it up), the NBA has painted itself into a corner with its asinine stance on leaving the bench.
As David Stern's lieutenant Stu Jackson said, "No one here at the league office wants to suspend players any game, much less a pivotal game in the second round of a playoff series. But the rule, however, is the rule, and we intend to apply it consistently."
As if the league had nothing to do with the stupid rule in the first place. No, Stu, the league does want to suspend players. That's why it creates Draconian, letter-of-the-law rules in the first place. Any fair assessment of the activity following Horry's cheap shot — and the conduct leading up to it — would lead one to conclude that a suspension for Stoudemire and Diaw was disproportionately harsh. But why leave room for fair assessments when you can tie your own hands with truly moronic rules that leave no room for interpretation or mitigation?
The rule was created to deter those out-of-control melees that have marred postseasons past. But clearly, in this instance, it failed as a deterrent. Two of Nash's teammates sprang to his defense after seeing their most valuable player get viciously poleaxed with 18 seconds left as he tried to dribble out the clock.
Did they punch anyone?
No.
Did they shove anyone?
No.
Did they escalate the situation?
No.
They were merely turned around by the Phoenix coaching staff and led back to the "vicinity of their bench."
But the de facto penalty — the end of the Suns' remarkable 61-win season — was as severe as if they had just come out swinging. Which sends an inane message: If you've already left the bench, you might as well get your money's worth and land a few haymakers on the guy who just cheap-shotted your teammate.
The irony here is that the Spurs — as always — have been the antagonist in this chippy series. Horry's body check was just the latest in San Antonio's fusillade of, shall we say, extra-legal conduct.
Bruce Bowen has mastered the art of fouling his man fairly constantly in a manner where the home viewers see it, the announcers see it, his opponents feel it and only the officials are blithely unaware of the stealth beating he's administering.
The perfect example of this technique occurred in Game 3 when he raked Nash's off-hand as Nash crossed over, forcing a turnover. Replays revealed a clear foul. They also revealed that referee Eddie F. Rush could not have been in better position to make the call, but — as has so often been the case in this series — he swallowed his whistle. Sometimes Bowen's mayhem is less subtle, like when he kneed Nash in the groin.
So the less-physical Suns had been knocked around pretty good in San Antonio and yet were mere moments away from slipping back to Phoenix all even with Mr. Momentum on their side.
Then Horry did his best Zdeno Chara impression, driving Nash into the boards.
The unflappable David Stern — the guy with absolutely no understanding of what it means to be a teammate or to be physically pushed to your very limits — believes that NBA players should have no reaction whatsoever when they see a beloved team member get cut down in front of them.
Or perhaps he thinks they should join hands in a prayer circle at their bench. This is all in keeping with his players-as-automatons goal for the sport. His strange, obsessive desire to wring all emotion out of the players gave us his zero-tolerance edict this season that resulted in countless technical fouls for mild protestations and, yes, sarcastic laughing.
Though he was quick to throw Joey Crawford under the bus, it was Stern and his misguided policy that produced the unfortunate Crawford v. Duncan episode.
Which brings us to the bigger picture: The sad state of the NBA. That pop you just heard is the bubble bursting on the long, uninterrupted NBA boom.)
Ask the dwindling number of hardcore NBA fans about this season and they'll tell you it sucked. Spurs-Suns was the last great hope to salvage something from this year-long walkabout in the hoop wilderness. And now Stern, via his button man Stu Jackson, has taken that away from us, too.
So now we can ready ourselves for the inevitable showdown between San Antonio and some Eastern Conference pretender — probably Detroit — and yawn our way through a series of 85-80 games in which both teams shoot 38 percent. Woo-hoo. Yee-haw.
The biggest basketball fan I know just sent me a one-line e-mail: "I hate the NBA."
Mission accomplished, David Stern.
Kevin Hench / FOXSports.com
Congratulations to the San Antonio Spurs on their fourth NBA championship in the Tim Duncan era.
And congrats, too, to the NBA and its idiotic, backward, zero-tolerance sentencing guidelines for making it possible.
I suspect the Spurs would have found a way to win two of the next three games against Phoenix even if Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw had played in Game 5, but now it's a foregone conclusion.
It was a great trade for the Spurs: Robert Horry straight up for Stoudemire and Diaw.
Horry is a terrific role player and perhaps the most clutch playoff performer in league history, but at this point in his career he's just one small element of Gregg Popovich's deep rotation, and he finished 12th on the Spurs in scoring at 3.9 points a game. Stoudemire is an All-NBA first-teamer and Diaw is one of the league's most versatile players.
Even with all their weapons locked and loaded, the Suns still had precious little margin for error and needed a spectacular finish in Game 4 to level the series at two games apiece. Without their best low-post scorer (Stoudemire) and low-post passer (Diaw), the Suns are sunk.
In other words, it was a great play by Horry to body slam Steve Nash into the scorer's table and the league rewarded it accordingly. In fact, all NBA teams should employ a Bob Probert-type player for exactly these situations. Send in the goon at the end of the game to clothesline the other team's superstar in front of his bench and see how many of his teammates manage to stay in their seats with their arms folded.
Like those obscene sentencing guidelines that bind the hands of judges and make them sentence people to life in prison for writing a bad check (Texas, you can look it up), the NBA has painted itself into a corner with its asinine stance on leaving the bench.
As David Stern's lieutenant Stu Jackson said, "No one here at the league office wants to suspend players any game, much less a pivotal game in the second round of a playoff series. But the rule, however, is the rule, and we intend to apply it consistently."
As if the league had nothing to do with the stupid rule in the first place. No, Stu, the league does want to suspend players. That's why it creates Draconian, letter-of-the-law rules in the first place. Any fair assessment of the activity following Horry's cheap shot — and the conduct leading up to it — would lead one to conclude that a suspension for Stoudemire and Diaw was disproportionately harsh. But why leave room for fair assessments when you can tie your own hands with truly moronic rules that leave no room for interpretation or mitigation?
The rule was created to deter those out-of-control melees that have marred postseasons past. But clearly, in this instance, it failed as a deterrent. Two of Nash's teammates sprang to his defense after seeing their most valuable player get viciously poleaxed with 18 seconds left as he tried to dribble out the clock.
Did they punch anyone?
No.
Did they shove anyone?
No.
Did they escalate the situation?
No.
They were merely turned around by the Phoenix coaching staff and led back to the "vicinity of their bench."
But the de facto penalty — the end of the Suns' remarkable 61-win season — was as severe as if they had just come out swinging. Which sends an inane message: If you've already left the bench, you might as well get your money's worth and land a few haymakers on the guy who just cheap-shotted your teammate.
The irony here is that the Spurs — as always — have been the antagonist in this chippy series. Horry's body check was just the latest in San Antonio's fusillade of, shall we say, extra-legal conduct.
Bruce Bowen has mastered the art of fouling his man fairly constantly in a manner where the home viewers see it, the announcers see it, his opponents feel it and only the officials are blithely unaware of the stealth beating he's administering.
The perfect example of this technique occurred in Game 3 when he raked Nash's off-hand as Nash crossed over, forcing a turnover. Replays revealed a clear foul. They also revealed that referee Eddie F. Rush could not have been in better position to make the call, but — as has so often been the case in this series — he swallowed his whistle. Sometimes Bowen's mayhem is less subtle, like when he kneed Nash in the groin.
So the less-physical Suns had been knocked around pretty good in San Antonio and yet were mere moments away from slipping back to Phoenix all even with Mr. Momentum on their side.
Then Horry did his best Zdeno Chara impression, driving Nash into the boards.
The unflappable David Stern — the guy with absolutely no understanding of what it means to be a teammate or to be physically pushed to your very limits — believes that NBA players should have no reaction whatsoever when they see a beloved team member get cut down in front of them.
Or perhaps he thinks they should join hands in a prayer circle at their bench. This is all in keeping with his players-as-automatons goal for the sport. His strange, obsessive desire to wring all emotion out of the players gave us his zero-tolerance edict this season that resulted in countless technical fouls for mild protestations and, yes, sarcastic laughing.
Though he was quick to throw Joey Crawford under the bus, it was Stern and his misguided policy that produced the unfortunate Crawford v. Duncan episode.
Which brings us to the bigger picture: The sad state of the NBA. That pop you just heard is the bubble bursting on the long, uninterrupted NBA boom.)
Ask the dwindling number of hardcore NBA fans about this season and they'll tell you it sucked. Spurs-Suns was the last great hope to salvage something from this year-long walkabout in the hoop wilderness. And now Stern, via his button man Stu Jackson, has taken that away from us, too.
So now we can ready ourselves for the inevitable showdown between San Antonio and some Eastern Conference pretender — probably Detroit — and yawn our way through a series of 85-80 games in which both teams shoot 38 percent. Woo-hoo. Yee-haw.
The biggest basketball fan I know just sent me a one-line e-mail: "I hate the NBA."
Mission accomplished, David Stern.
