Is The NBA Out Of Control?

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By now, any fan of basketball knows about the recent brawl between the Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks. Long story short, the Knicks committed a hard foul at the end of a game in which the Nuggets had a comfortable lead with only a handful of minutes remaining. That of course led to a physical confrontation that spilled into the stands but only slightly. The fight culminated when the Nuggets’ Carmelo Anthony threw a sucker punch in the middle of the melee that contained six or so guys. The idea of him throwing a punch is not the part that has most people talking, but the fact that he threw the punch and then ran away to mid-court to escape a retaliatory blow. The suspensions for the fight finally came down with Carmelo getting the worst of it at 15 games. Six other players received suspensions and both the Knicks and the Nuggets received fines of $500,000. The story does not stop there though, as the coaches of the two teams continue to place the blame on each other. Isiah Thomas, the coach of the Knicks, accused the Nuggets’ coach, George Karl, of running up the score by leaving his starters in the game with a comfortable lead that late in the contest. He thinks Karl was running up the score to get revenge on an earlier last-second loss to the Knicks. Thomas was also caught on tape mouthing words to Carmelo Anthony. It appears that he was telling Anthony to not go into the paint, which basically meant that he should not go inside or he would get hit. Meanwhile, Karl adamantly denies any involvement with running up the score. Between the verbal beatings given to Thomas, Karl explains that he is teaching his young team to win on the road and he realizes how easy it can be to give up a lead at any point in a game. He wanted to ensure the win and the best way to do that would be to leave the starters in the game. Coach Karl called Thomas plenty of names that cannot be repeated here, but in describing the coach that way he managed to pinpoint the personality of too many players in the NBA today. No one but the players got suspensions, but it seems that if there was a coach that deserved one, it would be Thomas. He not only instigated the hard foul that caused the brawl in the first place, but he is accusing a coach of running up the score as well. The fact that Thomas was an instigator like that when he played the game should be evidence enough that he had a role in starting the melee. The guy has clearly lost complete control of his team at this point as the laughingstock of the league continues to set a new low. Commissioner David Stern handed out the hefty fines and lengthy suspensions to show that neither he nor the league will tolerate the actions demonstrated by the players or coaches. Of course, the same thing was said a few years ago when the suspensions were given out after that epic fight in the Palace between the Pistons and Pacers. It is unfortunate but true that Stern has no control over the attitude this league is conveying. Thanks to the media influences, the players’ close ties to the rap industry, and the overall thug mentality of the league, the NBA is now known as nothing more than a bunch of vastly overpaid gangster wannabes. By no means is this a racial issue because all one needs to do is look at the facts to see that the NBA is out of control. How often is there an NBA player in trouble for something? Granted, all sports have their legal issues but none translate quite so prominently onto the playing field as professional basketball does in the U.S. There is nothing the league can do about it because the players are going to act however they want. The outside influences and temptations are too strong for anyone to put an end to it and in the race to see who has the most tattoos or baggiest clothing, the league will continue to spiral downward into a moral pit of despair until the players themselves are gone and a new era can be ushered in.