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5 Responses to “NBA Playoffs 2007: Our Second Round Predictions”

1. Bill Simmons Says:
   May 10th, 2007 at 6:12 pm

   The following is from The Sports Guy’s Blog by Bill Simmons of ESPN.com

   NellieBall can only take you so far…

   With the Warriors heading for one of those gut-wrenching, “How the hell did we lose that series?” exits, just remember, there are specific reasons why they’re trailing Utah 2-zip. Warriors fans can look back at Game 1 and say, “If Stephen Jackson makes that 3-pointer, we win it,” and they can certainly look back at Game 2 and say, “We choked.” Both of those points are true. If Utah advances, those two games will haunt G-State fans for the rest of the spring and summer.

   But here’s the real problem: Because of their unconventional personnel and reckless style of play, the Warriors are actually predisposed to squander winnable games against good teams. It’s not much different than succeeding in the NFL playoffs, when you need to succeed in specific categories to give yourself the best chance to win: run the ball and stop the run; take care of the football and force a couple of turnovers; win the special teams battle; make two or three big plays. That’s really it. Take care of those pieces and you’ll probably win the game.

   Well, the basketball playoffs are just as simple. If you made a list of the top five things that invariably kill playoff teams in May and June, it would look like this in some order:

   1. Can they control the boards when it matters?
   2. Can they bury their foul shots in crunch time?
   3. Can they get a defensive stop when they absolutely need one?
   4. Can they maintain their poise at the most crucial times?
   5. Can they get quality shots when it matters?

   Now …

   Look at the two games that Golden State just lost in Utah and ask those questions again:

   1. Can they control the boards when it matters?
   Considering the Warriors have been out-rebounded by a whopping 114-68 margin in two games, I’d say no.

   2. Can they bury their foul shots in crunch time?
   We know the answer to this one: Pietrus and Davis missed three of four free throws in the final 16 seconds that would have iced Game 2. For the game, G-State shot 26-for-37 (70 percent) from the charity stripe; Utah finished 28-for-33 (84 percent). The thing is, everyone who followed the Warriors knew they’d blow at least one huge playoff game because of free throws: Jackson was their only core guy shooting better than 76 percent, and Harrington (68 percent), Richardson (66 percent), Pietrus (64 percent) and Biedrins (52 percent) are legitimately shaky. That was their achilles heel. Everyone knew it.

   3. Can they get a defensive stop when they absolutely need one?
   Well, the Warriors can’t stop penetrating guards (as evidenced by Deron Williams easily getting off the tying shot in Game 2, or all the damage Devin Harris did in Game 5 of the Dallas series), and they can’t protect the defensive boards (it didn’t kill them against Dallas, but it’s destroying them against Utah). So the answer is no.

   4. Can they maintain their poise at the most crucial times?
   Not a major problem so far, although they melted down in Game 2 at Dallas. Am I confident that they can make it through this Utah series without Jackson or Davis melting down and getting thrown out at the worst possible time? No.

   5. Can they get quality shots when it matters?
   Another problem with NellieBall: When you’re creating a chaotic pace and trying to shoot 35-40 3-pointers a game, you adopt a certain “I don’t give a f—” mind-set for the first 45 minutes of the game … and then those last three minutes roll around, and you have to slow things down and get good shots and take care of the ball, but you can’t because you’ve already committed to that “I don’t give a f—” mind-set. So the same carefree, balls-to-the-wall mentality that got you where you need to be ends up killing you in the end. We didn’t see this problem against Dallas because three of G-State’s four victories were by 10 points or more. Against Utah? It popped out like a giant pimple.

   We’ve been down this road before with Drexler’s Blazers (1989-1992); with the ‘01 Bucks, ‘85 Nuggets and ‘87 Bucks; with Nellie’s Dallas teams; even with Nellie’s Warriors in ‘91 and ‘92. It’s one of the reasons I picked Utah to win in five — not because they’re a better team, but because they’re a better playoff team. Playing “NellieBall” (or whatever you want to call it) is almost like watching someone playing recklessly/aggressively at a poker table — maybe they stand out, maybe they’re fun to watch, maybe it can work for awhile, but eventually, they’re going to get screwed on the river. That’s what happened to Golden State in Utah.

   Now …

   There’s no way the Warriors are losing Game 3 in Oakland. It’s not happening. The Jazz will need one game simply to adjust to that frenetic crowd. But I see them squeezing out another nailbiter in Game 4, then closing Golden State out at home in Game 5. The fact is, Golden State couldn’t have asked for a better situation in Utah — two close games, no Derek Fisher in Game 1, foul trouble for Deron Williams in Game 2 — and couldn’t get it done. Just don’t say the Warriors choked. There’s an old saying about this that involves a sword. I’ll spare you the cliche.

   One more thing about last night’s game: Like everyone else, I was amazed and touched by the unforgettable Derek Fisher saga, one of those rare sports moments that was genuine in every respect — the way he was greeted by the fans, the way teammates and opponents hugged him during the game, the way he channeled his anguish into the basketball game, the appreciative way his teammates were interacting with him, his monster 3 that clinched the game, his heartfelt interview after everything was over, even the gracious words of the TNT guys after the game. We’ll always remember it as the Derek Fisher Game, one of those special nights that made me remember why I chose to write about sports for a living. Those nights happen from time to time, not always for the most uplifting reasons, but they always resonate. Sometimes it’s not about winning and losing. We forget this.

   Anyway, best wishes to Fisher and his family.

   Four leftover NBA thoughts/questions from Round 2:

   • Did it really take Scott Skiles seven quarters to realize that he needed to go small against this Pistons team? Why not just play Ty Thomas, Luol Deng, Andres Nocioni, Kirk Hinrich/Chris Duhon and Thabo Sefolosha for an extended stretch and see how it plays out? I can’t believe P.J. Brown or Mike Sweetney saw even a single minute of that series. And don’t get me started on Ben Wallace. …

   • Did it really take Mike Brown five months to realize that LeBron, Hughes and Pavlovic should all be playing at the same time? Really, you think so, doctor? You think it’s a good idea to play your best three perimeter guys at the same time? Anyway, it seems like they’ve finally settled into a groove — especially defensively, where they get their hands on a ton of balls — and the rest of the team is falling in place (even Ilgauskas has been decent lately). With LeBron peaking at the perfect time and making a run at the “42 Club,” I have to say … I’m not sure I’d want to play the Cavs right now. They could absolutely beat the Pistons.

   • There is no excuse for Marv Albert or Kevin Harlan not being involved in this Warriors-Jazz series. None. Zero. Zilch.

   • Here’s why Gregg Popovich is the best coach in the league: Phoenix makes its big adjustment in Game 2 (playing Kurt Thomas to cover Duncan one-on-one), and it’s clear from the beginning that it’s just not San Antonio’s night — they’re not getting any calls, they’re missing free throws and 3s, it’s just not happening. So he lets the game unfold without a big counter move and Phoenix pulls away in the fourth quarter, which probably would have happened regardless of whatever Pop did. Now we’re headed to Game 3 and Phoenix still has no idea how Pop will counter the Duncan/Thomas thing. Watch what happens in Game 3: the Spurs will counter (I predict they go small with Duncan and four perimeter guys, force Amare to guard Finley, Ginobili or Barry 20 feet from the basket, then pound the ball inside to Duncan) and Phoenix will take an entire game to adjust. If they had done this in Game 2, it wouldn’t have mattered because Phoenix was winning the game, anyway. I swear, this will all make sense when you’re watching Game 3.

2. Jemele Hill Says:
   May 16th, 2007 at 11:00 am

   The following is by Jemele Hill of ESPN.com Page 2
   
   Big Shot Bob strikes again

   A historical question: Could Robert Horry’s cheap shot on Steve Nash in Game 4 be the biggest shot of his career?

   The trey Horry nailed to destroy the Sacramento Kings’ NBA title hopes in 2002 did nothing compared to the damage his forearm could do to the Phoenix Suns, who until the final 18 seconds of Monday night’s critical Game 4 were tougher than the San Antonio Spurs. The forearm buried Nash underneath the scorer’s table, but most importantly, it incited Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw to charge onto the court from the bench — which all but guarantees them a suspension for Game 5 in Phoenix.

   Hey, they don’t call him Big Shot Bob for nothing.

   If the NBA hands out the expected suspensions, the Spurs will lose only the whopping seven points per game Horry is averaging in this series. Meanwhile, Phoenix will lose two of its top six players and a serious chance to put the Spurs’ neck in a guillotine.

   Is it fair? No. Is it right? Absolutely. The NBA doesn’t have much choice but to suspend Horry, Stoudemire and Diaw for Game 5.

   The rule about players leaving the bench is there to prevent situations from escalating into utter embarrassments. It’s an ironclad rule that isn’t open to interpretation, and it can’t be applied differently because it adversely affects one team more than the other. In fact, the point of the rule is to affect teams so adversely they don’t break it.

   If the league does nothing to Stoudemire and Diaw, it will set an awful precedent and send the message that the rules are vulnerable to perception and public outcry. As if the Suns are the only team in NBA history that can claim this rule puts them at an unfair disadvantage.

   And there’s no way Stoudemire just was ambling to the scorer’s table to check back into the game, as he claimed afterward. Give him (or the Suns’ PR rep) credit for coming up with such a cute excuse. But go watch the replay. Stoudemire broke out into a Carl Lewis-like sprint toward the on-court scrum — looking like he wanted to do to Horry what Uma Thurman did to David Carradine in the final scene of “Kill Bill: Vol. 2″ — which weakens Stoudemire’s creative explanation.

   Look, I get why Stoudemire and Diaw rushed to Nash’s defense. Nash is their boy, and teammates are obligated to stick up for one another — especially in a series that has grown as testy as this one. The Spurs were behaving uncharacteristically graceless, and Horry’s forearm of frustration was exacted because the Spurs blew an 11-point lead late in the game — and thus a golden opportunity to put their foot on Phoenix’s neck.

   But given how commissioner David Stern has shown zero tolerance for player misconduct since the Detroit-Indiana brawl, what Stoudemire and Diaw did simply wasn’t smart. And by the way, did you notice how the Spurs’ bench stayed put, further undermining Stoudemire’s contrived explanation?

   You’d have thought the Suns would have learned from Raja Bell’s one-game playoff suspension against the Lakers last year. Bell’s clothesline on Kobe Bryant could have cost the Suns that series.

   The Spurs are much stronger than the Lakers, and losing Stoudemire and Diaw will hurt a whole lot more than losing Bell. Even if the league decides to suspend Horry for two games, Phoenix will be affected much more.

   Of course, this is going to fuel speculation that Horry’s cheap shot was on purpose. But all it does is show exactly how much the Spurs are in Phoenix’s head.

   The Suns won Game 4, but the Spurs are winning the mental war. The Suns’ gritty victory was powerful enough to change this series permanently in their direction, but they’ve now given the power back to the Spurs with one bad decision.

   The Spurs maintain a certain advantage as long they can yank Phoenix’s chain whenever they want. And Big Shot Bob’s reputation for delivering in the playoffs continues to be well-deserved.

3. Tim Keown Says:
   May 16th, 2007 at 11:02 am

   The following is by Tim Keown of ESPN.com Page 2

   Your move, NBA. Are you going to suspend Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for leaving the bench after Robert Horry checked Steve Nash into the scorer’s table? Or, in an unlikely fit of common sense, are you going to assess the situation reasonably and throw down some show-trial fines and be done with it?

   It’s not a matter of understanding the rule. Clearly, the rule states that any player leaving the bench to join an altercation is to be suspended for a game. At least.

   But we’re talking about two of the Suns’ best players who left the bench and never mixed it up. We’re talking about the best playoff series going — probably the best one we’ll see, period.

   You want to hand it over to the team that committed the cheap shot? That’s what a suspension of Stoudemire and Diaw will do. The NBA is faced with flexing a little on an unnecessarily inflexible rule or running the risk of allowing Horry to win the series with a cheap, flagrant foul on one of the league’s marquee players.

   Diaw and Stoudemire should have known better, no question. Still, their franchise guy was down. They didn’t know whether he was hurt, or how badly. They reacted, then unreacted, with the idea of sticking up for Nash.

   Adding to the emotion is the behind-the-woodshed treatment Nash has received the whole series, and it’s not surprising their first thought wasn’t, “Oh, golly, I better stay here and let the authorities handle it.”

   So tough call, NBA, but not really.

   Think of it this way: You’re never going to have a league of competitive guys who don’t react by heading toward Nash in that situation. And you shouldn’t want one.

4. admin Says:
   May 16th, 2007 at 11:20 am

   In case you missed the Cleveland vs. New Jersey game the other night, here are my thoughts:

   Halfway through the fourth quarter, I came to realize something I have not previously seen: whichever team’s superstar had the ball last would lose the game. LeBron James and Vince Carter were having a fourth-quarter sucking competition that was really interesting to watch (and by “interesting,” I mean “terrible”).

   LeBron did his part by getting fouled and, true to form, hitting only one of two free throws. The Nets got the ball to Carter (fresh off of a few free-throw misses of his own) who dribbled away some of the clock — eliminating the chance for LeBron to suck last — and then lost the ball out of bounds. Game, suck, match.

   The thing I keep wondering as I watch crunch time in this series: has Jason Kidd lost the ability to create shots for his teammates in crunch time? Why put the whole game in Carter’s hands all the time? Also, Mikki Moore could teach a seminar called “how to motivate your opponent.”

5. Bill Simmons Says:
   May 17th, 2007 at 10:37 am

   The following is from Bill Simmons of ESPN.com:

   Common sense vs. the NBA rulebook

   As much as I’d love to condemn the NBA higher-ups for ruining the Spurs-Suns series, I can’t jeopardize the chances of them fixing the 2007 lottery for my beloved Celtics. We desperately need one of the top two picks or I’m going to develop a serious drinking problem. Those are the stakes. Now, you could argue that a serious drinking problem would inject some much-needed life into my column, and you might even be right. But I’d rather avoid this scenario.

   So here’s my defense on the NBA’s behalf …

   You can’t blame them for the Stoudemire-Diaw suspensions because they correctly interpreted a stupid, idiotic, foolish, moronic, brainless, unintelligent, foolhardy, imprudent, thoughtless, obtuse and thickheaded rule. Can you blame them for having that rule in the first place? Yes. But you can’t blame them for the actual interpretation — after all, Stoudemire and Diaw did leave their bench during an altercation, just like Tom Brady’s right arm was still coming down as Charles Woodson popped him in the Tuck Rule Game. Everyone knows about the leaving-the-bench rule. It’s been around for more than a decade. It’s the reason assistant coaches spin around during potential fights and hold their arms out like bouncers at a nightclub. It’s the reason a really good Knicks team got bounced from the ‘97 playoffs (robbing everyone of a much-anticipated Bulls-Knicks Eastern Conference finals). It’s also the reason why we haven’t had a bench-clearing brawl since the rule was invented.

   Here’s the problem with that stupid, idiotic, foolish, moronic, brainless, unintelligent, foolhardy, imprudent, thoughtless, obtuse and thickheaded rule: It’s currently designed as a black-or-white law that leaves no room for interpretation. As Barkley pointed out on TNT, Stoudemire and Diaw stopped after a few steps and never escalated the situation. In a way, it played out as poorly as the tuck rule did. In that playoff game against the Raiders, Brady pumped the football, brought it back down, got popped by Woodson and coughed up the ball. It should have been a fumble, but because of the stupid, idiotic, foolish, moronic, brainless, unwise unintelligent, foolhardy, imprudent, thoughtless, obtuse and thickheaded way that the tuck rule was designed, the play was interpreted correctly, the Patriots kept the ball and ended up winning in overtime.

   The bothersome thing is that both rules should have been changed. After the Pats-Raiders game, the NFL should have softened that rule to leave some degree of interpretation depending on the game and the situation. Same with the NBA after the Knicks-Heat debacle in ‘97. Why didn’t that happen? Because both leagues were so freaking stubborn and took so much heat for those two games, they obstinately kept the exact language of those rules in place. After all, a change of the rules would have been an admission that they failed. And as the old saying goes, those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

   Sadly, regretfully, unfortunately, the Stoudemire-Diaw suspensions tainted a successful playoffs and inspired a record-setting number of fans to exhale in disgust, “That’s it, I’m finally done with the NBA.”

   But there’s a larger issue that everyone seems to be missing, an issue that keeps popping up during these playoffs in various forms and might be fixable: Namely, that the NBA turned the competitive sport of basketball into something else. It’s still basketball, only it’s a bastardized version of it. A certain amount of instinct and competitiveness has been compromised. Why? Because of the league’s misguided attempt to create a fairy-tale universe in which world-class athletes can play basketball without ever raising their voices, trash-talking, bumping bodies, exulting after a great play or rubbing each other the wrong way.

   (You know what? Screw it, I can’t defend the NBA. I just can’t. If everything you’re about to read ends up costing the Celtics a top-two pick, I apologize. Now hold on to your seats … the pilot just turned off the “Don’t hold back” sign.)

   Three incidents/story lines from this year’s playoffs inadvertently illustrated the deeper dilemma here:

   1. Let’s say you’re one of the best seven players on the Phoenix Suns. You love Nash — he’s your emotional leader, your meal ticket to the Finals, the ideal teammate and someone who makes you happy to play basketball every day for a living. He’s killing himself to win a championship. His nose was split open in Game 1. His back bothers him to the point that he has to lie down on the sidelines during breaks. He’s battling a real cheap-shot artist (Bruce Bowen) who’s trying to shove and trip him on every play. But he keeps coming and coming, and eventually everyone follows suit. Just as things were falling apart in Game 4 and you were staring at the end of your season, he willed you back into the game and saved the day.

   Suddenly, he gets body-checked into a press table for no real reason on an especially cheap play. You’re standing 20 feet away. Instinctively, you run a few steps toward the guy who did it — after all, your meal ticket is lying on the court in a crumpled heap — before remembering that you can’t leave your bench. So you go back and watch everything else unfold from there. Twenty-four hours later, you get suspended for Game 5 because your instincts as a teammate kicked in for 1.7 seconds.

   Think about how dumb this is. What kind of league penalizes someone for reacting like a good teammate after his franchise player just got decked? Imagine you’re playing pickup at a park, you’re leading a game 10-3, your buddy is driving for the winning layup, and some stranger clotheslines your buddy from behind and knocks him into the metal pole. Do you react? Do you take a couple of steps toward him? I bet you do. For the NBA to pretend it can create a fairy-tale league in which these reactions can be removed from somebody’s DNA — almost like a chemical castration — I mean, how stupid is that?

   2. One of the running debates of these playoffs: Is Bruce Bowen a cheap player? I love the fact that anyone’s actually debating this — if your answer is “no” or your answer is “I’m not sure,” then you’ve obviously never played basketball in your life. Bruce Bowen is a cheap player. There’s no debate. He’s not some clumsy power forward who can’t stay out of his own way (like Mark Madsen), or even some uncoordinated center who can’t remember to keep his elbows near his body (like Shawn Bradley). He’s a world-class athlete who has complete control over every inch of his body at all times.

   As anyone who’s ever played basketball knows, with the exception of clumsy people who probably shouldn’t be playing in the first place, there are no accidents on a basketball court. Your feet just don’t coincidentally land under someone else’s feet as he’s shooting a jump shot, and you don’t just coincidentally kick someone in the calf as he’s going up for a layup or dunk. These things don’t just happen. They don’t. The only room for error happens when someone’s trying to block a fast-break layup or dunk, takes a roundhouse swipe and inadvertently ends up hitting his opponent’s head instead of the ball (like we saw with Matt Barnes when he clocked Matt Harpring Tuesday night). When Jason Richardson nails Memo Okur at the end of Game 4 because he’s pissed that Okur was driving at the tail end of a guaranteed win, or Baron Davis elbows Derek Fisher in the same game because he’s ticked that the Warriors blew a winnable game … those aren’t accidents.

   Anyway, for a world-class athlete with exceptional coordination, Bruce Bowen sure seems to have a lot of “accidents.” They happen because of his style — best described as “organized, physical chaos” — and because he deliberately bends the rules for a competitive advantage. When he was breaking into the league, Bowen played for the Celtics from 1997-99, back when I was living in Boston and attending nearly every game. He was just as good defensively back then — quicker, even — but couldn’t shoot to save his life (41 percent his first season, 28 percent his second season), and more importantly, he was a soft player. Opponents pushed him around, refs didn’t give him any respect, even his own coach (Rick Pitino) screamed at him constantly. Since Bowen seemed like such a nice guy, and he tried so freaking hard, everyone who attended those games found themselves feeling sorry for him. As gifted as he was defensively, I never imagined him making it because of his dreadful shooting and beaten-down, little-kid-getting-picked-on-in-class demeanor. He just needed one person to believe in him … and Rick Pitino wasn’t it.

   When he finally made it in San Antonio a few years later, I wasn’t shocked because there’s always a place in the NBA for someone with a specific skill (whether it’s long-range shooting, rebounding, defense or whatever), but I was shocked by his much-improved 3-point shooting (44 percent in 2003?????) and newfound intensity. Watching him hound offensive players was like watching Beecher torment Schillinger after he finally snapped in “Oz.” Where did this come from??? Suddenly, Bowen was willing to bend the rules, trip guys as they landed after jump shots, bump them when they weren’t looking and basically do anything to get into their heads, all while doing the whole “Wait, I’m in trouble??? What????” routine and pretending to be shocked anytime anyone threatened to kick his ass. Which happens every couple of months. There’s no doubt in my mind — absolutely none — that at some point between Boston and San Antonio, Bruce Bowen decided to do whatever it took to remain in the NBA. Even if it meant becoming a dirty player.

   Now here’s where the NBA failed: For a league that professes to be concerned about dirty play and any situation that could lead to a brawl, the league has curiously looked the other way with the single dirtiest player in the league. If he pulled this crap on a pickup court, or even in college intramurals, somebody would have punched Bowen in the face and broken his jaw. In the NBA? He gets to keep doing his thing and putting other players in danger. In the Phoenix series alone, he tripped Stoudemire from behind on a dunk in Game 2, kneed Nash in the groin in Game 3 and tried to knock Nash off balance in Game 4 as they were running back upcourt (causing a frustrated Nash to elbow him in the chops). The league penalizes two Phoenix stars for instinctively running toward an injured teammate, but they don’t penalize a perpetually dirty player who’s eventually going to trigger an ugly brawl before the end of his career?

   How the hell does that make sense?

   In the current NBA, you can’t commit a hard foul, you can’t trash-talk another player, you can’t pull your shirt up after a roof-raising dunk, you can’t protect a teammate who just got knocked into a press table. We have these rules — I’m guessing — because any of those actions can lead to an ugly fight. Ever since the Bad Boys Pistons and Riley’s Knicks tried to turn the NBA into the WWF in the late ’80s and early ’90s, nearly every rule change was created to prevent ugly incidents, even if some of those rule changes compromised the competitiveness of the league in the process. Well, if that’s the case, how could the league allow Bruce Bowen to keep running amok with no repercussions? Can you think of a better candidate to trigger an ugly fight some day than Bruce Bowen? Why do they allow him to keep doing what he’s doing? Seriously, does the NBA have a clue?

   (On second thought, don’t answer that.)

   3. The single most disgusting NBA development of the past few years? The flopping. Slowly, regretfully, inexplicably, the sport is morphing into soccer — as exemplified by Kirilenko’s swan dive near the end of Tuesday’s Jazz-Warriors game that fouled out Matt Barnes, or Kirk Hinrich’s perfectly designed flopparoo to draw Chauncey Billups’ fourth foul in Detroit Tuesday. I blame the influx of European players for this trend because flopping has always been an acceptable part of soccer; they grew up watching that crap and understood that it could work in basketball as well, especially if you have a group of largely incompetent referees calling the action. So it started a few years ago, it’s gotten worse and worse, and now, it’s affecting the overall competitiveness of these games.

   Here’s the problem: Because we don’t have any anti-flopping rules, it behooves defenders to fall backward every time a low-post player lowers his shoulder, and it behooves them to slide under airborne players and plant their feet for a charge (even if they might end up breaking the guy’s neck in the process). Not to keep bringing up the pickup basketball analogy, but geez … can you imagine if somebody pulled this crap during a game among friends? The prevailing reactions would be, “What the hell are you doing?” and “If you do that again, I’m gonna sock you.” But because the NBA refuses to do anything about the flopping, it’s evolved into a savvy defensive maneuver. For instance, if you’re Barnes and you’re giving up 50 pounds to Boozer on the low post, there’s only two ways you’re stopping him: Go for a strip if he puts the ball on the ground, or jump backward if he’s dumb enough to lower his shoulder as he’s turning around. Those are your two options.

   Is that basketball? Hell, no! In fact, when I was a little kid — and I swear to God, this happened — a guard named Mike Newlin flopped to draw a charge from the great Dave Cowens, a fiery Hall of Famer who played with a remarkable level of passion and fury, to the degree that he burned himself out after 7-8 years. Completely and utterly outraged that Newlin committed such a phony act of sportsmanship, Cowens berated the ref who made the call, yelled at him some more, then started running back on defense when he noticed Newlin dribbling up the court. Now, our seats were at midcourt, so this happened right in front of us and nearly caused me to pee my pants — as Cowens was running, he snapped and suddenly charged Newlin like a free safety, bodychecked him at full speed (much, MUCH harder than Horry’s foul on Nash) and sent poor Newlin careening into the press table at about 35 mph. Then he turned to the same ref and screamed …

   “NOW THAT’S A F——- FOUL!”

   Did Cowens get kicked out of the game? Of course. But there’s a moral to the story. Once upon a time, these guys had a code of honor. They played hard, respected the game, defended their teammates, and if anyone stepped out of line, there was always someone that would take care of them — whether it was another player, a referee, a coach or whatever. When fights or altercations happened, they were considered natural side effects of a physical sport. When two players talked smack, it was considered a good thing, a sign that the game was heating up, that we were potentially headed for a more competitive place.

   In fact, during the golden era of the NBA (1984-1993), three of the most inspired/famous/memorable moments, in retrospect, were McHale’s clothesline of Rambis in the ‘84 Finals, MJ standing over Ewing after a hard foul and swearing at him in the ‘92 playoffs, and Parish getting fed up with Bill Laimbeer’s crap, taking justice into his own hands and clocking him in Game 5 of the ‘87 playoffs. Why do those moments still resonate? Because there was a level of competitiveness back then that doesn’t exist anymore — it’s been beaten out of these guys, partly because the league has been terrified of another Kermit Washington moment for 30 years, partly because the “SportsCenter” era (where we show the same highlight six million times and pretend to be appalled) made the decision-makers too skittish (to the degree that Carmelo Anthony was suspended for 15 games for slapping another player).

   Personally, I don’t believe Kermit’s punch could happen again — it was the perfect storm of an NBA brawl, a powerful 6-foot-9 guy whirling around during a fight, then delivering a perfect straight right (seriously, that was like the right that Tommy Hearns threw to drop Roberto Duran) to the face of a peacemaker (Rudy Tomjanovich) who was running toward him at full speed and forgot to protect himself. Kermit’s punch was a complete fluke. Repeat: a complete fluke. And yet, every decision made in the past 30 years keeps coming back to that one punch; it’s the equivalent of a NASCAR driver dying after an accident that started because of one driver bumping another jumper from behind, followed by NASCAR banning bumping and completely removing that element from the sport.

   In other words, it would be a complete overreaction. You know, kind of like the Stoudemire/Diaw suspension.

   So don’t blame the NBA higher-ups for the way they interpreted that stupid, idiotic, foolish, moronic, brainless, unintelligent, foolhardy, imprudent, thoughtless, obtuse and thickheaded rule. Blame them for having the rule itself. Blame them for allowing the league to morph into something that doesn’t quite resemble basketball anymore. Blame them for a league in which basketball players aren’t totally allowed to think and act like basketball players and teammates aren’t totally allowed to think and act like teammates. Blame them for an ongoing double standard in which the Bruce Bowens of the league can willfully endanger other players, but a roundhouse swipe on an attempted block can get someone ejected if they miss by a scant 10 inches while moving at full speed. Blame them for dubious officiating that’s compromised the playoffs to the degree that an increasing number of fans are wondering where the WWE ends and the NBA begins.

   And speaking of blame … if you want to skip tonight’s Game 5 between the Suns and Spurs, I can’t blame you.

   Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine. His book “Now I Can Die In Peace” is available in paperback.

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