King Kaufman's Sports Daily
What an inspiring weekend in the wide world of sports! Which did you like better, the brawling or the spitting?
Read more: New York, Sports, NBA, Basketball, King Kaufman, Sports Daily
Dec. 18, 2006 | Ah, the glory and wonder of sport. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, the building of bodies and character. The teamwork, the sportsmanship, the community bonding.
The brawls, the spitting.
Not a great Monday to be a sports fan, is it? The two biggest sports stories of the weekend were a battle royal at a Denver Nuggets-New York Knicks game and Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens spitting in the face of an opponent, both on Saturday night.
On the plus side: Not a peep from Mike Tyson!
Not that either of these things, the brawl or the expectoration, upset our little applecart of harmony. Nobody really expects anything beyond second-grade deportment from Owens anymore, and the Knicks were an affront to decent sensibilities long before Mardy Collins employed a horse-collar tackle on Nuggets guard J.R. Smith on a breakaway.
Highlights of the rumble on endless loop on the highlight shows called up memories of the far worse fight at the Palace of Auburn Hills two years ago, when the Indianapolis Pacers, Detroit Pistons and sundry fans got into it.
That shining moment ushered in a new era in the NBA. Almost everything commissioner David Stern has done since Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson of the Pacers waded into the stands throwing punches, from the off- and on-court dress codes to the hair-trigger technical foul order, has been an effort to clean up the league's thug image, which reached its apotheosis that night.
It may be too early to tell, but it seems to me the effort isn't working. What's happened instead is that Stern has gotten himself a reputation for being high-handed.
The signature moment of this new era has been the one that didn't arise from trying to polish the rep. It was the new-ball fiasco, when the commissioner unilaterally introduced a new, synthetic game ball. The players hated it, even filing an unfair labor practices complaint, and Stern was forced to reverse himself, announcing last week that the old leather ball will return on Jan. 1.
But for all his troubles, and for all that two years probably isn't long enough to turn around the reputation of an entire league, as evidenced by the fact that plenty of casual sports fans still dismiss the NBA as the plodding, defense-first league it hasn't really been for two or three years now, Stern just can't catch a break.
Next page: You can't legislate against idiocy
