King Kaufman's Sports Daily
The real culprit behind brawls like Saturday's in New York is childish whining about running up the score.
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Dec. 19, 2006 | The surprising and unhappy news Monday was that New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas walked in the aftermath of the brawl Saturday at Madison Square Garden.
Almost as surprising and puzzling to this column was the idea in the commentariat that while Thomas got off cheap, so did Denver Nuggets coach George Karl. My colleagues seem to actually buy Thomas' argument that Karl was at fault for, get this, having his best players in the game.
Thomas was neither fined nor suspended by NBA commissioner David Stern Monday despite fairly strong circumstantial evidence that he set in motion the series of events that led to the all-men-in rumble late in Saturday's game against the Nuggets.
Stern suspended Denver forward Carmelo Anthony, the league's leading scorer, 15 games for sucker-punching New York rookie Mardy Collins. Collins' hard foul on Denver guard J.R. Smith -- which it's likely Thomas ordered -- led to the brawl. New York's Nate Robinson, who escalated things initially by stepping in as a third man and challenging Smith, got 10 games, as did Smith, whose wrestling match with Robinson landed them in the laps of paying customers.
Collins got six games, Jared Jeffries of the Knicks got four for trying to get to the backpedaling Anthony after the sucker punch, and Jerome James of the Knicks and Nene of the Nuggets got one game each for leaving the bench. Each franchise was fined $500,000.
Thomas got nothing, despite Anthony saying the Knicks coach had warned him to stay out of the paint late in the game with the Nuggets up by 19 and the regulars still in the game. That's a pretty clear warning, in hoops-speak, that a hard foul was coming.
Thomas' statements after the game and on Sunday, in which he said the Nuggets were at fault for embarrassing his team by running up the score with the regulars after the Knicks had "surrendered," that Karl had "put his players in a bad situation," lent credence to the idea that Thomas had ordered the hit.
Even if Thomas hadn't ordered Collins to pull a goon job -- and if you believe he didn't there's a bridge not far from the Garden I'd like to sell you -- Stern should have slapped him for his comments afterward. Anything short of condemning the violent actions of his players -- even if that condemnation is USDA Prime bull -- should have showed Stern that Thomas just doesn't get what Stern is trying to do in his efforts to clean up the league's thuggish image.
A suspension might get the message across, although even Thomas might consider a few days away from the Knicks a blessing.