Author Topic: Stephen A. Smith | NBA Hurts Itself In Bryant Case (Read 236 times)

GangstaBoogy · « **on:** March 16, 2007, 10:38:50 PM »

There's a frightening element to the flagrant fouls and resulting suspensions involving Kobe Bryant, and it has nothing to do with the "witch hunt" Lakers coach Phil Jackson swears is taking place.

It has to do with the National Basketball Association's increasing paranoia.

It is real. It borders on insanity in the eyes of many, and it is sullying the league.

The NBA is doing a better job of keeping us focused on its image issues than its players these days, and many wonder why.

Take Wednesday night. The league's schedule ended with a beauty as the Phoenix Suns edged the Dallas Mavericks in a double-overtime thriller. But instead of salivating over the greatness of Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki, the basketball world was fixated on the $50,000 fines handed to both Jackson and the Lakers organization over comments Jackson made in defense of his star player.

"Man, I'm not even going to touch it," Bryant told me yesterday afternoon, hours before going against Allen Iverson and the Nuggets in Denver. "Anything I really want to say would be highly inflammatory, so I'm better off not saying much of anything.

"But it would be real nice to be able to sit down with commissioner David Stern or [NBA senior vice president] Stu Jackson to watch video or have a discussion where I'd get a chance to explain my side. But hey, what can you do?"

The league's act is getting tired.

First, game officials were authorized to heighten their sensitivities, which reduced them to dishing out technical fouls over looks and body language.

The ball issue was next, where the league shifted from leather to pleather without consulting the players, only to change things back on Jan. 1.

And now in the aftermath of receiving two one-game suspensions (for elbows to the nose of both Manu Ginobili and Marko Jiric), Bryant was assessed a Flagrant 1 penalty on Tuesday for elbowing the air near 76ers forward Kyle Korver's nose. (Bryant never connected.)

This is the NBA these days, folks, with its game getting as soft as Cottonelle tissue and its hierarchy more sensitive than Judge Judy.

Years after Ron Artest ran into the stands at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Basketball Nation has quietly put that fiasco behind it.

Not the NBA, though. No one does a better job of keeping the incident fresh in our minds than those in the league office.

When Phil Jackson, talking of the Flagrant 1 assessed to Bryant, spoke out and said: "That's crazy! That's a vendetta. [The league] has a witch hunt going on. It's nuts," he was obviously saying it to protect Bryant. But he should have been saying it to protect the rest of the league.

What he should have done is publicly remind the league of what most everyone knows:

The NBA by and large is a microcosm of society. Yes, there was that ugly brawl between the Knicks and Nuggets and an out-of-control Carmelo Anthony. But aside from that fight night at Madison Square Garden, most of the league's 400-plus players have shown this season that they know how to act as if they have some sense.

So it would have been nice to hear Jackson tell Stern and his boys, "Look, I know there are a few knuckleheads in this league, but you know there are not many. Kobe, who lives and breathes basketball, certainly is not one of them. So let's not blow these issues out of proportion and act like some crime has been committed and it's the NBA's job to play cop and come to the rescue."

That was necessary years ago. It isn't now.

Stern's take?

"At the end of the day we will do what we always do. We'll address matters on a case-by-case basis, see how things go, see if and where we made mistakes about anything and correct them," the commissioner told me weeks ago. "Nothing's a perfect science. You learn as you go along.

"I know we have a great league, filled with great players doing great things. That matters more than anything, and I will never waver in my quest to make sure people know that about our players."

Good for Stern.

Now the thing he needs to remember is when to be stern, and when to pull back a little bit so the league can shine again.

To go overboard with the Bryant issue, just hours after Ron Artest is allowed to play basketball days after getting arrested over a domestic dispute with his wife, doesn't send the right message. It perpetuates the very stigma Stern and the NBA are trying to escape.

Bryant was called a "thug" this week for throwing an elbow in a game. Artest and others with far more serious infractions have been called "thugs" for years.

Whether or not this correlation - being made by just a few of the constituents Stern is trying to appease - bothers the NBA significantly is something I do not know.

I just know it bothers me.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/sports/16914742.htm