Big Shot Rob Strikes Again, and the Suns Pay...

Once again the NBA followed the letter of the law and completely missed the point. Every major brawl in NBA history is the result of an uncalled for, over the top foul that ignites tempers on both sides. Yet, the NBA consistently punishes the wrong team for such fouls. Detroit’s Ben Wallace pounds Ron Artest to the ground, igniting the worst riot in NBA history, and who pays the worst price? The Pacers, who are still trying to recover from the destruction of what many thought was a championship team. New York’s Mardy Collins gives a pile driver foul on Denver’s J.R. Smith and who ends up paying the worst price? The Nuggets who lose Carmelo Anthony, the NBA’s leading scorer, for 15 games. Big shot Rob comes up with a BIG shot on Steve Nash, and who gets punished? The Suns, who will lose their home court advantage by playing game five without all-NBA first teamer Amare Stoudemire, and without Boris Diaw. Look, I’m not saying that the NBA shouldn’t suspend players who come off the bench and cause the melee to escalate, all I’m saying is that they’re trying to stop the spread of fire, instead of focusing on stopping the ignition. Basically, what they’ve told the Suns, is that tonight, at some point in the game when Tim Duncan and Tony Parker are on the bench, the Suns should send Pat Burke into the game to lay a hard foul on a driving Manu Ginobili. The reality is that Duncan and Parker will jump up and come to the defense of their teammate (as they should), be suspended for that decision, and the Suns will trade the services of Burke for a game without Parker or Duncan. That’s the logic that the NBA continues to lay out in these situations, when they punish the team that was assaulted, but gives the assaulting team a relative pass. It’s stupid. In this situation, Stoudemire was detained by Suns coaches before he got anywhere near the fight, and Diaw turned himself around. If you actually watch the tape it seems as though Diaw is actually more concerned for Nash and turns back to the bench when he sees Nash get up. So, basically he was suspended for taking two steps towards a fallen teammate and turning around again, wow that’s smart justice!

What does this mean for the Suns? It means that they dust off Jalen Rose, and perhaps Marcus Banks, if only to play five or six minutes each, they also play the whole game with their smallest possible lineup, get pounded on the boards, and use Shawn Marion for all 48 minutes. Can they win? Sure, we have seen in the past, even by these Suns (last year when Raja Bell was suspended for his legendary clothesline of Kobe Bryant), that teams rally for a game when their teammate is suspended. After the Malice at the Palace, the Pacers won their first game without Jermaine O’Neal, Stephen Jackson, and Ron Artest, after the Knicks brawl the Nuggets won their first game without Anthony and Smith, while those teams eventually succumbed to playing without their best players, they rallied for one game. Of course neither of them, nor the Suns last year, were playing the San Antonio Spurs. Really, whether the Suns win or not comes down to their two time MVP. I said at the beginning of this series that the Suns were going to win because of Nash, and this is his moment. This has been a hard series for him, he missed the crucial moments of game one because his nose was gushing blood, he was kneed in the nards by Bruce Bowen, and now, because Robert Horry hammered him into the boards he’s lost his best big man, so what can he do? He can step up, shoot the lights out, get all of his troops on the same page, and will them to victory. If the Suns lose, they’ll lose because of the suits in New York, but if they win, they’ll win because they have the two time MVP and despite what some might think, he actually is that good. Like I said, it’s his moment, his moment to prove those who doubt his MVP awards wrong, his moment to get revenge for all the blows the Spurs have laid on him, his moment to push his nemesis to the brink of elimination, whether he grabs that moment will determine whether the Suns go home, or go BIG.