If you're expecting me to be critical of Adam Silver then you, my friend, have come to the wrong place. As far as I'm concerned, you can consider those lights slaps on the wrist to be additions to the long list of things I think he's done right during his tenure as NBA commissioner. Granted, they weren't decided upon by him (that honor goes to Kiki VanDeWeghe) as much as they were signed off on by him, but the truth of the matter is that the following suspensions are much like the scolding a parent gives a young child through suppressed laughter when they won't stop parroting their curse words. To put it simply, these were halfheartedly handed down to save face more so than they were heavily-handed down to deter similar behavior in the future... - Four games for causing a completely unnecessary scene that quickly got out of hand, and returning to said scene to throw a Superman sucker punch. - Three games for spitting on an opponent and lying about it after using a well-deserved finger to the face as a justification to hook off on someone with which he harbors long-standing hatred.
- Two games for trying to mush an opponent out of LA County and responding to the ensuing fisticuffs in kind. I don't know what the punishment should have been if it's goal was to prove, once and for all, that on-court violence will not be tolerated by the Association, but a week long (give or take a couple days) absence from the lineup in mid-to-late-October certainly isn't going to do it. Early season circumstances allowed for the NBA to come down hard on Brandon Ingram, Rajon Rondo, and Chris Paul without having too much of an impact on the outcome of meaningful games, and yet they still basically said "ah, screw it". If that's not a significant sign that the NBA is self-aware of the shamelessly entertaining soap opera they've become then I don't know what is, because these acts of discipline defy precedent. As someone who was once sat down for 15 games for throwing a similarly sneaky punch, Carmelo Anthony is right to be "shocked" by the shortness of the suspensions. I'm just not so sure we should be, as most basketball fans would inject the feeling that fight gave them directly into their veins if given the opportunity, and Adam Silver - more so than his predecessor - knows what basketball fans fiend for.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
January 2020
|