So You Want to Fight, Do You?

This is where I'm going to post some comments to my letter from Stern, et al., re-explaining the decision to suspend Amare and Boris. A FULL WEEK after the suspensions four days after the Suns were eliminated, Stern and Jackson decided to explain themselves yet again. Why? Why did the email go out on the day of the Draft Lottery?

I'm just going to pick apart some lines. Sort of a brainstorm before the more focused and articulate response comes out.

I have to put something in out of order, because I don't know where it goes, but its bugging me. Someone (maybe more) in that national media said that the suspension really hurt because Amare and Boris were primarily responsible for guarding Duncan. Well, maybe in Game 1. Please, don't try to do us any favors; get your facts straight so I'm not lumped in with your un-educated opinion.

To paraphrase The Bard once again, "Methinks Stern doth protest too much." This is where the fun begins:

"Thank you for taking the time to contact us about the suspensions of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw of the Phoenix Suns. Although we probably will not change your mind, we wanted to share with you the rationale for the rule and the facts requiring our decision."

Translation: "Let me patronize a little more. I seem to still keep getting heat for this thing and you babies should just listen."

"Although we probably will not change your mind ..."

Condescending is not a strong enough adjective here. They know we just can't get it through out little heads and wanted to take the opportunity to point that out again.

"The Rule
Rule 12, Section VII(c) of the NBA Official Playing Rules says: 'During an altercation, all players not participating in the game must remain in the immediate vicinity of their bench. Violators will be suspended, without pay, for a minimum of one game and fined up to $50,000.'"·

Okay? But where are the terms "altercation" and "immeidate vicinity" defined. A wrote one about this already. How can you have a "bright line" rule that creates "strict liability" if the terms are not defined? Come on, Dave, you're supposed to be a layer.

"The purpose of the rule is to prevent an on-court altercation from getting worse by making sure that players on the bench do not become involved -- whether or not they intend to."

So, intention is not a part of the decision? Didn't Stern talk about Duncan's "intent," "body language," and "facial expressions" on the now-infamous Dan Patrick Interview. Dave, so we're sure, which part should I be writing down? That which you email me or the words that you utter?

"The fewer the number of players on the court, the less likely it is that an altercation will escalate and the more likely it is that the referees and coaches will be able to restore order without serious injury to players or to fans."

This is why he makes the big bucks.

· The rule doesn't look to the intent of the players leaving the bench and it does not distinguish among the curious, the peacemakers or those seeking to become involved in the altercation.

Tim Duncan and Bruce Bowen?

"The reason for this is simple -- the players on the court have no idea what a player's intent is when he leaves the bench and in the heat of the moment they may well assume the player is approaching as an aggressor. Thus, the language of the rule is firm: 'violators will be suspended.'"

I'm not going to re-hash this one as everyone has already linked to all of the other exceptions that have been made. Did all those guys in the Knicks-Nuggets "altercation" that came off the bench get suspended? I dont' know.

"· This is not a rule that can be enforced on a case-by-case basis"

Then, why have you done so in the past? And with Bowen and Duncan? It gets a lot better below when he starts talking about the intentions of Amare and Boris. Buckle up.

" -- if a player were able to leave the bench and later argue his case and avoid a suspension, there would be more players leaving the bench."

Do you really think so? Perhaps it is true. Of course, most employees are allowed some sort of hearing before being punished. I may be able to live with this comment, though.

"And because the rule has been applied consistently over the years, bench-clearing incidents have been rare."

It has not been applied consistently.

"Overall, the leaving-the-bench rule, together with others, has succeeded in dramatically reducing the amount of fighting in the league and all but eliminated serious injury during fights that do occur."

It was in place before the Brawl at Auburn Hills, right? Yeah, it was a great deterrent there.

See, this is the problem with making statements based on anecdotal evidence. That's about as logical as saying, "There's a large rock in my front yard and I've never been attacked by a bear. Do you want to purchase my bear-protecting rock so as to safeguard your family?"

In order to prove this statement, you need, at a minimum, the following:
1. An analysis of the frequency of fights in which the benches clear (or are largely emptied) both before and after the rule.
2. An analysis of the seriousness of the injuries occuring during bench-clearing brawls before and after the rule.
3. Evidence, probably based on player interviews, examining why they did not join into on-court altercations. Step 3, of course, only happens if the empirical data from 1 and 2 supports your hypothesis.

"· Teams and players are reminded of the rule before every regular season and again before the playoffs. Teams try to ensure that their players comply with the rule by both reminding them of it and assigning assistant coaches the job of keeping players in the vicinity of the bench when incidents do occur."

As soon as the coaches could, they turned around and tried to keep everyone back. They did a good job. Again, though, please give a definition of "vicinity" that is less vague than "between 1 and 25 feet from your seat."

"· As soon as Steve Nash was fouled, both Amare and Boris ran toward the scene, each ending up over 20 feet away from the Suns' bench and near the altercation."

So, every hard foul is automatically an "altercation"? That's interesting.

In any event, "immediately" after the foul, nothing was going on. Nash was in a heap and Horry was walking away like a boxer after a knock-out blow.

"Despite what many have said, they didn't 'walk' a few feet from the bench and they didn't 'wander' onto the court."

Are you saying they ran over to Nash? Maybe they did, I can't remember right now.

"· No one knew what the players' intentions were when they left the bench and they could very easily have gotten involved in the altercation had it spilled over in their direction."

I think we can agree this happened very near the Suns' bench. If they had stood up and the "altercation" spilled over toward them, would they have been in trouble.

At this point, you may want to stop me and say, "That's quite a few 'what-ifs' and we're not dealing in hypotheticals here." I'd be forced to agree with you, but I'd also point out that you should have easy, very defensible answers if it's such a clear-cut, bright-line rule.

"Zero tolerance," right? That means all you have to do is robotically answer and not make any decisions. Decision-making without using judgment is always what leads to the robots taking over humankind in the sci-fi movies.

"And although you could say they were having a "natural" reaction to seeing their teammate go down, assistant coaches are supposed to stop bench players from acting on those kinds of reactions,"

Again, Duncan in the second period. Look, you applied "judgment" and "discretion" to that situation but not to this one.

Oh, wait a second. I reminded everyone to buckle up, right? What "reactions" are the coaches supposed to stop? The "natural" ones?

Stu Jackson said that he's never seen anyone "trying to check in like Amare did." Why is that relevant, Stu?
Answer: Because you guys made it relevant by dancing around the Duncan-in-the-second-period question.

"which was the case with the 17 other players (active and inactive) who were on the benches at the time and did not leave."

Why is this relevant? Who cares what they were thinking, right? Who cares about their "intent," right? Are you trying to point out that not everyone gets up every time? Yeah, we all know it can be done. I suppose these two guys are just too stupid to follow along with what everyone else does.