Sports Media Review

Tales of Efficiency

Once it took hold - there was no stopping it. Following last night's 34-28 Giants' victory, Cindy Brunson and Qadry Ismail were analyzing the game. (I almost put analyzing in quotes, but figured that was too cheap a shot). And, in discussing Eli Manning's performance, they described it as efficient, though Ismail uttered the word with what almost seemed to be an apologetic smile on his face. But, then, subsequent renderings of the game over the next hour or so on ESPNews dropped the trepidation about the word, and simply embraced it. By the time the game was an hour old, Manning's performance had become "very efficient." Throw in a few smatterings of football's new favorite phrase to describe quarterback play - "he did a good job managing the game" - and you get the picture: with his team's season on the line, Eli did a nice job directing his offense to a 34-point output.

To be sure, the story of the night was Tiki, and that was rightly the headline. Tiki may not be a Hall-of-Famer, though he's damn close, but he's now put together one of the most impressive three-season runs in NFL history for a running back and it's remarkable how little attention has been paid to the magnitude of what he's accomplished since the start of the Tom Coughlin era in 2004. But, let's just take a moment to dissect Eli's "efficient" performance.

Manning went 12-for-26. Obviously, that's bad. He threw for 101 yards. That's pathetic. His 3.9 yards per attempt is worse than pathetic. The Giants did convert 8 of 14 third down opportunities, so props to Eli for his performance there, as several came on short passes. He had an interception-free game. But, efficient? Please. His QB rating for the game was under 70. Eli managed very little other than handing the ball off to his star running back had the game of his life, setting a franchise record for rushing yards in a game in the process. This had nothing to do with Eli. Furthermore, I was listening to the game on WFAN's stream, and Giant announcers Bob Papa, Dick Lynch and Dave Jennings called at least three Eli passes that should have been intercepted but were simply dropped by Redskins defenders. That's just luck. At least twice, Manning pulled an Eli special, whereby he responds to a blitz by simply chucking the ball downfield in the general vicinity of Plaxico Burress and praying the ball doesn't get picked off.

Finally, did I mention the Redskins defense? It sucks. They're 30th in the NFL in total yards allowed and, even better, they're dead last in terms of opponents QB efficiency. The QB rating of all of Washington's opponents this year is 97.8. In other words, Joe Gibbs' defense turns every opposing QB into Peyton Manning. Except, apparently, his brother.

To his credit, and since I never give him any, Sean Salisbury had it right last night on ESPN following the game. He said that Eli is, right now, incapable of carrying his team and that, absent Tiki doing so, the Giants will be eliminated quickly from the playoffs. Crediting pitchers with team wins is a flawed way of assessing their performance. Crediting QBs with team wins is even more flawed. The Giants won in spite of their QB last night, not because of him.

And, Happy New Year everyone.

Assessing Knight

(this post originally appeared on December 29, 2006)          

Though Bobby Knight will have to wait a few more days to surpass Dean Smith as the winningest men’s Division I basketball coach, there’s plenty of ground to cover in assessing the coverage. Last night’s game on ESPN, against UNLV was a strange affair. There was great anticipation and hype, naturally enough, and a series of profiles throughout the game highlighting the highs and lows of the General’s career. Unsurprisingly, Dick Vitale is an unabashed booster, and his play-by-play sidekick, Dan Schulman, did his best to play along.

Too much attention is paid to Knight’s slip-ups over the years for ESPN to ignore those altogether, so ESPN made the obligatory nod to the 1985 chair-throwing and other famous hits. But, the company line appeared clear enough – to celebrate Knight’s greatness as he stood on the verge of the all-time record.

The night began with Schulman exclaiming about Knight that “they love him here in Lubbock just as they loved him in Bloomington” and Vitale asserting, early in the game, “you may not have liked, you might not have liked some of his actions, but he’s certainly one of the great coaches of all time.” Vitale included Knight in a category that includes the likes Scotty Bowman, Vince Lombardi, Casey Stengel, Dean Smith and Adolph Rupp.

Knight’s stature among the all-time great coaches is not in dispute (though I will add a caveat to that below). Harder to assess is how his extraordinary accomplishments on the court should be measured against his numerous transgressions on and off the court.

Vitale’s approach, repeated throughout last night’s telecast was a variation on the following:

“Are there some negatives – yes? But there are so many positives in his record.”

In a typical comment, after ESPN had interviewed a retired colonel who played for Knight at Army in the 1960s and praised Knight for preparinghis players for battle in Vietnam by the way he coached, Vitale exclaimed:

“They loved wearing that uniform because they, ultimately, really represent all of us.”

Vitale noted numerous times during the telecast that though Knight has made mistakes, we’ve all made mistakes. And, Schulman, perhaps self-conscious about the degree to which the broadcast was hyping Knight, said to Vitale during one exchange: “I am not trying to set you up here (of course not, Dan) but, would you say that most of his players would have positive feelings about Knight?”

Here Vitale threw a bit of a curveball, responding that some of the players who left early, or transferred would have a different view, but ultimately noting that: “those that stayed the four years, yes, [the vast majority] have positive feelings. If you sit down and study all the positives and the negatives, it’s not even close…”

Schulman also suggested that a lot of the legendary coaches had legendary tempers – but Vitale could only come up with one name - Woody Hayes. And, notably, of the three coaches to whom Knight is most often compared – Smith, Wooden and Rupp – the former two had such completely different styles, and such an absence of the sorts of transgressions that have been commonplace in Knight’s career, that a direct comparison of their missteps would shed very poor light on the General.

In a second-half set-piece about Knight’s fiery temper, the Schulman voice over concluded: “whether you like Bob Knight or not, you know exactly who he is.” This is obviously meant as a good thing, but I confess that having lived in NC much of the last 17 years, I find that particular “compliment” of dubious value, since it was routinely applied to Jesse Helms, a deeply bigoted and horrible man who had an insidious impact on public policy in the United States.

While Schulman and Vitale were obviously rooting for history to be made, it did occur to them at some point in the second half that a Red Raiders loss only meant that ESPN got to hype another otherwise meaningless early season game, this one on New Year’s day between Tech and New Mexico. This realization seemed to considerably lift their spirits.

Leaving aside ESPN’s coverage, there’s been a slew of commentary on Knight. As John Feinstein said in his column today (to which I’ll return), the pieces can typically be divided into two camps:

“It is always the same whenever Bob Knight is in the news. It doesn't matter if he is making news by setting the all-time record for victories as a men's college coach (or failing to do so as he did last night) or snapping a player's chin or having a fight with a college chancellor at a salad bar.

The defenders line up on one side and recite chapter and verse on The Good Knight: brilliant coach; turns boys into men; graduates most of his players; has never come close to breaking an NCAA rule; a principled man in a business frequently lacking in principles.

Everything they say is accurate.

Then the detractors line up on the other side with their arguments about The Bad Knight: he's a bully; he emotionally abuses everyone around him, most notably his players; he's not nearly as loyal to friends as he claims to be; he's never admitted to being wrong about anything.

Everything they say is also accurate.”

Actually, many articles include both sides, before weighing on which side is weightier. For example, Ian O’Connor, of FOX sports.com gives Knight the following props:

“At the top, let's cover the standard Knight disclaimers in the name of fair play. His teams have never been on NCAA probation, and his program has pumped money into the school library, charities and the Boys & Girls Club. Knight makes certain his players go to class. His school's website boasts that nearly 98 percent of his four-year players have gotten degrees. He has visited nursing homes and shelters for abused women. He has come to the aid of Landon Turner, a member of his 1981 championship team who would be paralyzed in a car wreck.

Knight also stands as a fundamental genius. To watch him work a drill is to wish your son or daughter could find a coach or professor so dedicated to his or her craft.”

But, for O’Connor, the sins outweigh the good deeds and, ultimately, the result is that Knight has trashed his own legacy. After rehearsing the familiar litany of Knight misdeeds, O’Connor concludes his piece by recounting a conversation with a one-time victim of Knight’s temper:

“When it became clear that Knight was about to become the new sheriff in Lubbock, I called the police officer whom Knight struck in Puerto Rico during the 1979 Pan Am Games.

Jose Silva Guilfu said Knight broke his jaw after he insisted the coach vacate a practice court for the waiting Brazilian women's team. Knight left Puerto Rico and was convicted in absentia to a six-month jail term he never served.

"I don't hate Bobby Knight," Silva Guilfu told me then. "I do believe in God and I know something will happen to make him pay for what he did to me.

"He's received some punishment already. People know all about his conduct."

Yes, people know all about his conduct as the General prepares to march into history as the winningest college basketball coach of them all. Bobby Knight spit fire at everyone in his path, and ended up burning down his own legacy.”

In a similar vein, Pat Forde of ESPN.com believes that even Knight’s record-setting win will be tainted by the fact that it’s not happening from the Indiana bench:

“Knight, who is now tied with Dean Smith at 879 victories, likely will become the winningest coach in Division I men's college basketball annals during the Red Raiders' ongoing four-game home stand. In hope that people actually will show up to see Knight enter the record books, Tech has been offering $8.80 general admission seats to the four games at United Spirit Arena. And if you buy a lower-level ticket to those games, you can get one upper-level general admission seat for free.

It's not an easy sell. Texas Tech averaged 6,707 fans in its 15,000-seat arena for four of its early home games this season (attendance for Sam Houston State was not listed) before pulling in 11,561 for the record-tying game against Bucknell this past Saturday.

This is the bed Bob Knight made for himself: He'll make history at an out-of-the-way school with no men's basketball heritage in a football state, in front of a house that very well could be less than full. He'll make history in exile, in effect.

Not exactly the moment of glory this could have been.

If it had happened at Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Ind., there would be no need for sales promotions to fill seats. And it could have happened at Assembly Hall, if ... “

Forde then writes a hypothetical article, one that should have been written about Knight, had his penchant for ultimately self-destructive behavior not taken him away from the place that made him a legend. That would-be paean to Knight concludes:

“Now he can finish his career in a perfect spot: in a state where basketball is a religion and Knight is its high priest.”

In today’s Washington Post, John Feinstein also sees Knight’s career trajectory as a tragic indictment of his self-destructiveness. For Feinstein, Knight has already had his Woody Hayes moment:

“Here though, as Shakespeare would say (and Knight has read Shakespeare), is the rub: Knight believes, as do his defenders, that life works this way: If you commit five good deeds on Monday, you are excused from any bad deed you might commit on Tuesday. Knight believes that because he plays by the rules, because most of his players graduate and because he's gone out of his way to help friends in need, it was okay to grab Neil Reed by the neck and okay to stuff an LSU fan into a garbage can and it wasn't wrong to toss a potted plant over the head of an elderly secretary and it wasn't such a big deal to send that chair spinning across the court -- not to mention all of the other misdeeds and missteps through the years.

Knight's philosophy of life basically comes down to this: If I help a little old lady across the street for 10 straight days, but then yell a profanity at her for walking too slowly on the 11th day when I'm running late, I should be excused because I was nice to her the first 10 days.”

“The question that is asked most often about Knight is whether he will have an ending similar to Woody Hayes, another of his mentors.

The sad truth is this: He's already had it. Knight can talk all he wants about how happy he is in Lubbock cobbling together good teams at Texas Tech, a place where basketball will never be as important as spring football. He can talk about how much he likes the people there and how little he misses Indiana.

It simply isn't true. Knight belongs in Indiana. It is where he should have broken the record and finished his career. Imagine Wooden not finishing his career at UCLA; Smith not coaching at North Carolina; Rupp at Kentucky; Krzyzewski at Duke. How is it possible that a man who coached three national champions and an Olympic gold medal-winning team and did so without cheating while graduating his players and standing for all the right things about sports ends up fired?

It can't happen to an icon. Unless he slugs a player on national TV during a bowl game. Or refuses to believe that zero tolerance means zero tolerance for him. It can only happen to someone who simply refuses to understand that, even for icons, there are some rules. Knight never has understood that. Rules have always been for everyone else but not for him.”

In these parts, while Dean Smith has been his usual magnanimous self about the impending surpassing of his record, others have not been so pleased. Here’s Barry Jacobs, the longtime ACC area basketball writer (and local Chapel Hill politician) on the meaning of Knight passing Smith:

“Maybe this won't be as bad as we thought.

Maybe there will be sufficient respect shown for Dean Smith, and what he achieved at North Carolina and the way he achieved it. Maybe this will be less a glorification of a bully and a boor and more a celebration of a coach and of coaching, a paean to sound fundamentals, clean recruiting, fearsome defense, motion offense, and a systematic approach to teaching the game of basketball.

Maybe we will see Bob (or is it Bobby?) Knight smile instead of snarl, acknowledge instead of attack, express humility instead of hostility when he passes Smith as the man with the most wins as a major-college coach.

Maybe.

The best we can do is work toward ambivalence, a grudging acceptance of this shift in the coaching pecking order.

In part, this reflects our admiration and respect for Dean Smith and the way in which he did things.

Unlike Kentucky's Adolph Rupp, the man he surpassed in career wins in 1997, Smith coached throughout his career against full-time basketball coaches rather than moonlighting football assistants at schools that did not take basketball seriously.

Unlike Rupp, who was either a racist or did a good impersonation of one, Smith coached with and against black athletes in a more competitive, highly pressurized, nationally scrutinized game. Unlike Rupp -- a fellow Kansas grad and disciple of Hall of Famer Phog Allen -- Smith never got his program on probation.

And, unlike most college coaches of any period, Smith is a man with a social conscience who, while admittedly comfortable in his status, is unafraid to stand for the values and causes in which he believes. We admire that.

In part, our discomfort with Knight's ascendancy reveals our antipathy for the coach exiled to Texas Tech after one too many transgressions at Indiana.

There's no point in cataloguing Knight's periodic acts of violence, abuses of authority, explosions of ill-temper, and arrogant indifference to the leaders of his own university and to the bounds of conduct expected of everyone else.

Suffice it to say, we will forever marvel at parents who knowingly send their children into his care and at leaders of higher education who tolerate his antics because he wins.

Finally, we regret seeing Bob Knight as the preeminent coach because, frankly, we are ACC chauvinists and he traces none of his roots to these parts.”

<fontsize ="3">On this last point, is Knight really the pre-eminent coach, once he passes Smith in the wins column? Feinstein argues that the five greatest college basketball coaches of all time are, in whatever order you choose – Smith, Knight, Coach K, Rupp and Wooden. I wouldn’t argue with that. It’s taken Knight about four seasons longer than Smith to amass the same win total, and Smith’s got a winning percentage about sixty points higher than Knight. Knight’s won three national championships (as has Coach K), versus just two for Smith, and both are dwarfed by Wooden’s national championship total, though Wooden coached in an era when it was possible to monopolize talent in a way that became impossible about the time Wooden retired in 1975. As Jacobs notes above, Rupp also coached under less competitive conditions than Smith, Knight or Coach K, but his four championships place him second all-time.

Knight’s not had the kind of NBA talent that regularly passed through Chapel Hill. Isiah Thomas was, by far his best player ever and no one else really approached him in terms of NBA performance - compare that to Jordan, Worthy, McAdoo, Carter, Jamison and the endless list of future NBA stars who played for Smith). According to Michael Rosenberg of FOX sports, this makes Knight less than the best recruiter of all time, but it does make him the best coach of all time.

There is one caveat to this discussion (wasn’t that worth the wait?) that I have seen little commentary on: Knight has really faded as a top flight coach over the past decade or more. The last Knight team to make the final four was the 1992 Hoosier edition. The 1993 team, which went 31-4, was the last Knight team to win a conference title. In the five seasons from 1994-95 through 1998-99, Indiana lost at least ten games every season. If you consider that an elite program should - save for the three or so tough games pre-conference games on the schedule - win virtually all of its non-conference games, records like 19-12 or 20-11 just aren’t very good. In fact, nine of the last 11 Bob Knight teams, including four of his five Red Raider teams, have lost at least ten games. Smith, by contrast, lost ten games in a season just four times inhis entire thirty six year career as head coach. Last year’s Tech team went 15-17, the first losing season in Knight’s career, and only three of his five seasons in Lubbock have ended with trips to the Big Dance. Vitale insisted last night that it was “unbelievable” that Knight had managed to take three Texas Tech teams to the NCAAs in the past five seasons. But, this is a preposterously low standard for an all-time great coach trying to get a school from a major conference into a 65-team field. There is simply no comparable stretch of mediocrity in Smith’s career or Coach K’s.

And, to return to the issue raised by Forde and Feinstein, if Knight’s defenders contend that he has had to make do with less than elite talent at a school in a football state, that begs the question of how this all-time great ended up at such a barren basketball outpost.

Leaving aside the off-the-court issues and the controversy, Bob Knight is simply no longer an elite coach though, because of his career accomplishments, he is still treated as one (not unlike Bowden and Paterno). He is an all-time great, but other than padding his win totals, he has not added substantively to his stellar accomplishments in more than a decade.

Career Move

I am back from vacation, so I’ll be resuming more regular posting.

Over at Sports Law Blog, Howard Wasserman has the following “random prediction for the New Year: George W. Bush will be the next Commissioner of Major League Baseball.”

Wasserman makes the following case:

“Current Commissioner Bud Selig announced earlier this month that he will retire when his contract expires at the end of 2009 (although apparently, back in in 2003 he said the same thing about retiring in 2006, so stay tuned). Bush will be out of a job at 12:01 p.m. on January 20, 2009. And he will need something to do, since one cannot imagine him monitoring foreign elections and fighting world health battles.

Baseball commissioner always has been a job that has attracted people from politics and public service. Commissioner A.B. "Happy" Chandler served as Kentucky's Governor and U.S. Senator both before and after his term in baseball. Chief Justice Fred Vinson considered resigning from the Supreme Court to take the job after Chandler's term ended in 1951. Names such as Mario Cuomo and George Mitchell have surfaced in the past as potential candidates. And, of course, Bush used to own the Texas Rangers, so he combines a political background with baseball-insider status, which would make him very appealing to the owners.”

Wasserman also notes that Bush apparently expressed interest in the job back in the early 1990s, before Bud Selig led a palace coup against Fay Vincent and became commissioner and Bush decided to run for governor of Texas.

I know Wasserman’s having some fun here, but there are a few reasons why I think such a turn is unlikely.

First, back in the early 1990s, in the shadow of the brief, but high profile commissionership of A. Bartlett Giamatti, it was easier to imagine baseball commissioner as something of a celebrity position. But, given the increasing business stakes in all professional sports, there is more of a premium on having a capable technocrat to guide themajor sports leagues. With ever greater pressure to troll new revenue streams to slake the multi-billion dollar thirst of the owners, it’s important for commissioners to be skilled in labor negotiations, savvy about new business possibilities and new technologies and, it would appear, to be hands-on when it comes to over-seeing those ventures. If we’ve learned anything about President Bush, it’s that he is notably unable or unwilling to give the kind of attention to detail and conscientious monitoring of nitty-gritty policy processes required of a good manager of a bureaucracy. Unless he were purely a figurehead, he’d be a poor fit for the job based on his temperament and skill sets.

Second, he would be a less than ideal figure head at this point. What Bush might have brought to the office in the early 1990s was a famous name and a reputation as a popular part owner of the Texas Rangers. In other words, to the extent that he had a public profile at that time, it was an innocuous one. In fact, it’s likely that Bush had no negative ratings to speak of in the court of public opinion. If he’s not going to be skilled manager sitting atop a multi-billion dollar enterprise, he would need to bring a popular profile to the table. This, it can safely be said, Bush no longer has. Yes, he’s now perhaps the most well known person in the world, but he’s also wildly unpopular, and would bring to baseball all sorts of needless controversy and antipathy.

Third, Bush isn’t really a serious baseball person. If he had a detailed knowledge of the business side, or a particular aptitude as a negotiator, as David Stern did when he took over the NBA, Bush’s lack of depth of knowledge of the sport would be less of an issue. But, absent a skill set suited to the position, and as a very unpopular person, the only remaining justification would be if Bush had special knowledge of the game. But, he doesn’t. He’s a fan, and he spent a few years as the public face of the Rangers’ ownership group in the early 1990s, a position which helped facilitate their sweetheart deal with the city of Arlington to build the Ballpark. But, Bush was not meaningfully involved in day-to-day operations and certainly not personnel matters.

In other words, he’d be a poor choice on almost all relevant grounds. Wasserman’s right – it’s hard to imagine Bush devoting himself seriously to the causes that have engaged former Presidents Carter and Clinton, or his own father, for that matter. But, baseball is a serious business requiring a serious and dedicated leader. Bush is not that guy.

What Ails the Giants

I have always counted myself a fan of Selena Roberts, sports columnist for the New York Times. She is one of the most incisive sports opinion writers in the business, and often has a special flare for cutting through the spin and the crap of team executives, NCAA administrators and other sports power brokers.

But, I have criticized her before and her column in the Times today is emblematic of what has gone wrong in some of her recent work. In pursuit of a pithy narrative, Roberts seems determined to shove facts in where they don’t belong, lending the feeling of an odd disconnect between her overall argument and the supporting evidence used to substantiate it. She did this in a piece about Arod this summer and she’s done it again with Tom Coughlin today. (I have some sympathy for Arod. I have none for Coughlin).

Roberts’ contention about Coughlin is that, as the title of her column tells it, there seems to be a “mismatch” between the coach and his team. As is usually true of Roberts, I agree with the premise. And, her piece starts out strong:

“The flashpoint for the hostile witnesses inside Giants Stadium yesterday wasn’t a pantomime offense unable to escape the invisible box of its own territory.

And it wasn’t a Giants defense that allowed the Saints rookie Reggie Bush to reveal how a draft-day decision can recast the outlook of a team and a season (ouch). And it wasn’t the Bermuda Triangle effect on Eli Manning’s accuracy or the lost kick in the kicking game or inept scheme in every phase.

Instead, incongruity pushed them over the edge.

They began a chant of “Fire Coughlin” only after yet another disconnect between the gospel of the coach and the sins of his players. In a span of 13 seconds during the third quarter, before a 30-7 blowout was fully formed, left tackle Bob Whitfield head-butted a Saint just before center Shaun O’Hara threw another to the turf.

Two flags. Two personal fouls. And one reason to wish Tom Coughlin gone.”

My Giants’ fans friends and I have been scratching our heads for three seasons now about how sports media continue to characterize Coughlin, with a straight face, as a disciplinarian, given how many stupid penalties and self-destructive plays emanate from this team every week. The upshot is a team whose total is much less than the sum of its quite talented parts, the ultimate sign of coaching failure.

But, Roberts has a tendency to harp on the same character issues that many sports media types do, and it steers her off track in her assessment of the disconnect:

“[Giants management] hired Arthur Fiedler to conduct VH1’s “Divas Live.” A mismatch from the beginning is in full bloom now. Coughlin is a throwback coach trying to direct a team built to win today that is assembled with self-consumed players fixated on tomorrow.

This Giants’ season has been one endless audition for football’s afterlife. Kicker Jay Feely has been clearing his throat, angling for whatever ESPN gig is in his future. Michael Strahan saves his voice for a paid appearance with WFAN. And while Coughlin stares holes into game films, Tiki Barber has been simultaneously breaking down film of defenses and Matt Lauer.”

The implication, of course, is that the Giants are more interested in their off-the-field careers than their on-field performances. But, singling out Barber, Feely and Strahan here is simply off-target. Tiki has always been singularly dedicated to his fitness and his craft. His performance, since Coughlin arrived in 2004, has been Hall-of-Fame caliber, and his transformation from a talented, but fumble-prone back into a superstar who never fumbles is arguably the single greatest accomplishment of Coughlin’s coaching tenure. Tiki’s post-retirement plans are, of course, well known. But, he’s still having an outstanding season and his public remarks about his coach, concerning game-planning, seem entirely reasonable criticisms, not the products of a preening, self-absorbed “diva.” Likewise, whatever Jay Feely’s off-field interests, he’s been a very competent and professional kicker in his two years in New York. And, all anyone needs to know about Strahan, the team’s best defensive player for a decade is that they win about as often as the Detroit Lions when he’s injured.

In other words, I dare say none of the Giants’ problems this season, or since 2004, are attributable to the three players Roberts has called out here.

Roberts also rehearses a variant on the “inmates-running-the-asylum” theme:

“And yet the Giants’ dire predicament right now wasn’t entirely unforeseen. Remember, Coughlin was greeted in his first spring on the job with an anonymous pack of Giants who alerted the N.F.L. Players Association about his strict guidelines. The players weren’t whining but sending a message to Coughlin: We’re in control.”

In Coughlin’s first season, his rules for showing up on time to meetings became famous: unless you were five minutes early, you were late. And, some Giants did complain that they were not aware of this rule. But, there’s simply been no evidence in Coughlin’s three years in New York, that his team has disobeyed him. What’s striking about the Giants, in fact, is that for all of the complaining, there has been no rebellion of any kind. No off-the-field issues, no open defiance of the coach, no refusal to abide by Coughlin’s strict dress code, meeting rules or anything else. The Giants’ players have not, as a group, staged a coup against Coughlin. We know they can’t stand the guy, but there’s no meaningful sense in which they’ve substituted their own authority for their coach’s authority. Roberts is simply substituting a larger narrative about the contemporary athlete for an accurate assessment of how the Giants’ organization has been running since 2004.

To be fair, part of Roberts’ claim here is that Coughlin cannot relate to his star players – that for his disciplinarian routine to work, he needs a bunch of no-names like he had when Jacksonville was an expansion team:

“These Giants weren’t Coughlin’s Jaguars, a ragtag bunch collected on the fly for an expansion team, but a group with a strong identity.

“We really had a bunch of misfits,” the former Jaguar Jeff Novak said during an interview in March 2004. “There were a bunch of guys who were marginal players who would do anything and everything to make a club. I was one of those players.

“With an established team like Tom has in New York, quite honestly, there are plenty of guys who are good enough that, if they’re not happy with him, they can go find a job someplace else very quickly.”

But, then Roberts follows up with this out-of-place rumination:

“Other jobs,other careers. Everyone is leaving Coughlin — even General Manager Ernie Accorsi, already in retirement mode.

Whitfield said: “Tiki is not coming back; our G.M. is not coming back. We’re all in some bit of vulnerability in this league.”

The fact is that life in the NFL is insecure for all but the best players in the league. And, like most teams, the Giants have some stars and a bunch of non-stars, toiling for non guaranteed contracts and one injury away from the end of their careers. And, Whitfield’s quote directly contradicts the premise of the previous paragraph – that there’s no meaningful insecurity for the Giants and, by implication, no motivation to play hard for a guy like Coughlin. And, it should be noted that the only high profile Giant who has really performed poorly these past few weeks (Strahan’s been injured) is the quarterback, who rates barely a mention in the column, though his lack of development has been, arguably, the single greatest failing of the Coughlin era.

Roberts is right: Coughlin seems to communicate very poorly with his team. But, it’s not because his star players are prima donnas who don’t care about what happens on the field because they’re too busy preening for other careers. And, it’s not because the players have somehow usurped Coughlin’s authority. There’s simply no evidence for that. And, it’s not because, somehow, back-up lineman like Bob Whitfield, forced into a major role because of a season-ending injury to Left Tackle Luke Petitgout, don’t feel the pressure of the unemployment line to get them to play hard.

Not everything that has happened this year is Coughlin’s fault. The team has been, even relative to the harsh standards of the NFL, slaughtered by injuries this year. And, though the Giants have impressive front line talent, the overall talent level, especially on defense, is not great. And, then there’s the historic trade for Eli in 2004, not Coughlin’s responsibility, which may cost the franchise for years to come. But, Coughlin’s own failings are straightforward enough – his inability to coach his team in such a way that they don’t continue to make costly mistakes. There are plenty of stars on teams like the Colts, Chargers and Ravens, and somehow their coaches have found a way to coax efficiency and intelligence out of the performances of those teams’ stars and non-stars alike.

Roberts has gone fishing for a larger moral of the story here – and it just doesn’t fit the facts.

Feely's Take

An article in the New York Times this morning profiles Giants' kicker Jay Feely. Feely, like his more famous teammate Tiki Barber has ambitions well beyond the football field, including the desire to pursue a future career in the media and, perhaps, politics. Feely considers himself a man of strong Christian faith, and I think I can guess what his politics are, though his viewpoint is not made explicit in the Times piece.

In any event, the story mentions that Feely writes a regular blog for NBC.com. I have read a few entries and find it mostly banal. However, Feely does have an interesting post about what he regards as the mutually exploitative relationship between professional athletes and the media.

Feely writes:

"Media member (sic) will tell you that they don't have a vested interest in writing negative stories. That is inherently untrue. The nature of media today is decidedly negative. Most nightly newscasts are filled with crime reports and barely touch on positive human-interest stories. MSNBC, CNN, FOX News, 20/20, and the rest report on decidedly negative stories because that is what generates ratings. When you are driven by bottom line finances you are not unbiased. In Atlanta, when we were marred in a nine-game losing streak and the local media had very little to report on, I witnessed them actively seeking to create controversy when none existed. When I questioned the reporters about it they merely said my editor forced me to write this story. They will often deny culpability in their story by using their editor as a scapegoat or blaming the person who writes the headline. This is where the disdain develops in the athlete. They witness the reporter purposefully skewing their words in a fashion they knew they were not intended to have a greater impact. The athlete witnesses the manipulation of a situation to generate a specific response and he becomes hardened. I am not trying to unburden the athlete from his responsibility to speak carefully, be aware, and control his emotions, but it is also undeniable that the media has a specific agenda."

Especially illuminating here is the dynamic between reporter and editor and how the pressures inherent in that relationship prompt reporters to go fishing for controversy. Reporters, as a rule, never like to acknowledge the ways in which the pressure of their business affects the coverage. Their preferred explanation for the nature of coverage is that events simply happen, and they simply report them, as if neither interpretation, editorial discretion, corporate pressure or personal bias plays any conceivable role in what we, the readers, learn and don't learn.

It's refreshing, and unusual to see someone in a public position puncture the bubble just a bit.

They Really Do Go on Forever

Richard Sandomir of the New York Times has an article this morning discussing the celebrity interviews that are a regular feature of Monday Night's ESPN telecasts.

Sandomir notes that the form itself is nothing new. The legendary MNF crew of the early seventies regularly invited celebrities - like Burt Reynolds promoting "The Longest Yard" in 1974 - into the booth.

"At ABC, the “Monday Night” booth was every bit as star needy as ESPN’s is now. It is fascinating, then, to hear cries that ESPN’s second-quarter celebrity fun house is a ridiculous distraction from the game or blatant cross-promotion of other parts of the Disney programming complex.<> Nothing is new about this — ESPN is deploying the 2006 version."

</>But, notably, Sandomir says, the maestro of those exchanges, the late great Howard Cosell, used to keep it brief and to the point:

"One difference between then and now, based on a compilation of ABC star turns, is that Cosell dispatched his guests quickly, as if they had soiled his carpeting. He didn’t want them to stay for more than a few questions.

“I hope you’ll forgive us for not being able to talk to you,” he said to Hal Linden and Steve Allen. They did not seem to care.

To Shatner, Cosell said: “A fumble. We’ll get back to you later.”

Some of the lengthier interviews on the ESPN version of Monday night:

Ronde Barber - 32 minutes (this strikes me as, at least, somewhat justifiable, since Barber's a player and has more insight about the actual game than certain other people he's sharing the booth with).

Matthew McConaughey - 14 minutes
Jeff Gordon - 11 minutes
Jim Belushi - 7 minutes

Sandomir recounts criticisms others have directed toward ESPN:

"There are some people who see nothing diverting or entertaining about all this, that watching Gordon receive a Belgian waffle maker as a wedding gift (his wife is from Belgium) is piffle, or that hearing Stallone, promoting the release of “Rocky Balboa,” at Kornheiser’s request, bellow, “Yo, Tony, go for it!” in his Rocky voice, is an affront to the memory of Pete Rozelle."

I don't know about an affront to Pete Rozelle's memory. And, perhaps this celebrity stuff is ESPN"s concession to the fact its Monday Night telecasts draw a much larger audience than its usual fare, necessitating programming that would appeal outside its target, hard-core sports demographic.

But, the long interviews clearly detract from the coverage of the game, which is already spotty given the three-man team ESPN's assembled. Maybe there's data showing that the celebrity interviews hold the attention of parts of the audience that would not normally tune in. Nevertheless, if there is one thing I would have expected from ESPN taking over such a high profile sporting event, it's that the network would have focused its attention on maximizing our understanding and enjoyment of the game on the field.

It's a pity that ESPN spends countless hours hyping the game in the 48 hours prior to broadcast only to give it short shrift after kickoff.

This Will be My Last Brawl Column (Until the Next One)

Concerning the fight at the Garden, the race issue has become more of a topic of discussion as the week has worn on, so I wanted to survey some of it. On Monday, Knicks’ guard Steve Francis sparked additional controversy when he suggested that race was a factor in the attention the fight was getting. From the New York Post:

"In other sports, there are incidents that are way worse than basketball," the Knicks guard said. "So many worse things happen every game or four or five times a year, but because there are more black players in the NBA, it's under the microscope more than baseball or hockey."

The Post article added that: “the league disciplinarian who conducted the investigation, Stu Jackson, is black.”

On Tuesday, on the Dan Patrick show, sports talk radio’s most famous liberal, Keith Olbermann, responded to Francis. When Patrick asked him about Francis’ comment (and Patrick reiterated that Stu Jackson is Black,” K.O. emitted a deep sigh and said:

“Steve Francis is so stupid about this and so naïve about this that he could be running the New York Knicks.” K.O. and Patrick then spent the next several minutes discussing all the juicy plot lines that make the fight appealing as a news story: the George Karl/Larry Brown angle, the fact that it involved the NBA’s leading scorer, that it took place in the media mecca. All of which is fair enough – there are interesting subplots to the story. Then Patrick and K.O. ticked off a litany of other stories that get saturation coverage, including anything involving the Red Sox and the Yankees. K.O. then asked, rhetorically, whether Yankees/Red Sox coverage was racially motivated.

This last comment is the kind of embarrassing logical fallacy that Olbermann has been hammering Bill O’Reilly for for years now, a variation on what’s called an association fallacy. The fact that some are suggesting that race is a factor in the attention this story is receiving does not suggest that race is a factor in the coverage of every sports story. Not Keith's finest moment.

Jemele Hill, ESPN 2 columnist, (and the only regular African American woman sports writer in America), had this to say:

“It is what it is. A NASCAR guy can drop-kick another driver through his car window and it is just considered part of the sport. Hockey players drop their sticks and pound on one another on a regular basis and no one dares blame it on anything other than just a boiling, competitive spirit. When NASCAR drivers blast one another with their cars out of anger it isn't symptomatic of what's wrong with white people. So please don't turn a silly NBA fight into a town hall meeting about what's wrong with African Americans -- even though, unfortunately, something like this somehow winds up reflecting poorly on the entire black community.”

Along these lines, JA Adande, of the LA Times, gets to the heart of the matter (Hat Tip: duffbeer):

“Meanwhile, black basketball players fighting apparently is such an issue that it even competed for weekend air time with that other staple of saturation coverage — missing white people (on Oregon's Mt. Hood). The reaction to the New   York Knicks-Denver Nuggets fight Saturday night has prompted players and fans alike to wonder whether there's a racial undertone to the extra attention paid to whatever goes wrong with the NBA….

Yes, there will always be racial components when you're dealing with a league in which more than 70% of the players are African American. But it's not that simple in this case. The NFL has a similar proportion of African American players (66% last year, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport), and almost all of the notable misdeeds, right down to the stomp on a helmet-less head by Tennessee's Albert Haynesworth — have been committed by African Americans.

Somehow NFL players have received the status normally reserved for white people in America: the right to be judged individually, not collectively. After Timothy McVeigh blew up that building in Oklahoma City, security guards didn't cast a suspicious eye on every white man driving past a federal building. But ask any person of Middle Eastern descent how hard it was for them to board an airplane after Sept. 11.

The same double-standard goes for the NFL. At most a misdeed will be grouped by a team, such as the rash of arrests of those on the Cincinnati Bengals roster. But it's rare to see the leap from "that guy" to "those thugs" in "that league," which is what happens when an NBA player does something dumb.

The NBA has always sold the personality of its players and the close proximity the fans have with them. In cases such as Saturday that can backfire, as Nate Robinson and J.R. Smith rolled over the courtside seats.

When NBA Commissioner David Stern announced the fines and suspensions Monday, he heard the old image issue again. At times such as these, Stern sees how that can work against them. "Our players are more visible," Stern said. "They are better known, they play a game where the best seat in sports is a courtside seat watching players without helmets, long sleeves, long pants. No glass [around the playing surface]. And the camera captures that as well.

"Over the years, that's been our burden. But that's also been our opportunity."I think we're judged by a stronger standard because of our game and because of our willingness to engage. We could have players coming off the bench the same way players come out of the dugout [in baseball]. We could have players stop and fight, the way they do in other sports that I won't name but are played on skates. But we don't. Not only don't we encourage it, not only don't we permit it, but we prohibit it. Having taken that tack, we're going to be judged harshly by it. And I understand."

Two points - 1) Stern has the order backwards here. The NBA is not judged more harshly BECAUSE it has decided to take a tougher stand. It has taken a tougher stand BECAUSE it's judged more harshly. Stern is spinning like crazy here, but there's no question of the causal order in this case.

2) I am dubious about the visibility argument, which we've been hearing a lot this week - that the NBA is held to a higher standard because of its "greater visibility" because its players don't wear helmets, or hats, or long pants, and because the crowd is so close. Kornheiser said this on PTI on Tuesday, Stern's been saying it, and Detroit Free Press columnist Drew Sharp repeated it on Quite Frankly on Wednesday in a panel discussion in which he denied that race played a role in the nature of the attention the fight has been receiving.

I regard this line of argument as a good example of working hard to miss the obvious. First, except for the people sitting within a few rows of the court, most fans can't see the players that clearly. I go to most UNC home games and sit with a friend in the second level. We do not have anything like an intimate view of the players. And, since I am not Spike Lee or Woody Allen, I've never gotten to sit courtside at a Knicks game. Consequently, of the many basketball games I've watched at the Garden over the years, I've never gotten a great look at the players and, I dare say, my experience in this regard is more typical than those of the guys sitting on press row.

Second, there's no greater ability to show close-ups of basketball players on television than there is to show baseball players and, because of the nature of the action, we certainly get a better, longer look at a guy standing at home plate than we do at a basketball player during the normal course of a game. Adande rightly points out that, to some extent, what we're seeing now is the flip side of a marketing strategy that emphasizes individual players.

But, for the most part, this proximity and intimacy argument is, in my view, nonsense.

A casualty of the reverse political correctness that plagues our sports conversations is that any time race is raised as an issue, it’s met with tremendous anger and defensiveness. For a good sampling of that, check out some of the emails Adande received after his column appeared yesterday. George Vecsey, writing in the New York Times this morning, gave some nice perspective on the history of fighting in basketball, noting that it was at least as prevalent “back in the day” (by which he means the 1950s, not the 1980s – though it was more prevalent then, too). But, inserted into Vecsey’s column was this bizarre comment:

“I have trouble with the perception that the public is somehow turned off by fighting in the N.B.A. because the players are predominately African-American. The brawls I witnessed back in the early ’50s involved predominately white players, and I don’t remember there being any outcry about white violence.”

But, George, isn’t that the point? That, as Adande says, White players have earned the right to be judged as individuals, not as a part of a group?

If this kind of stuff is coming from the liberal, pinko-commie New York Times, or the ultra liberal Olbermann, you know it’s an uphill battle to have an honest conversation about race.

Tiki on Fox

(Note to readers: Thanks to Merwincast, for the comment on the last post, and also for the heads up about the RSS issues. If others of you are having problems, and wouldn't mind telling me, I'd appreciate it. It keeps getting pushed back, but if all goes as planned, I am going to moving off of this stupid AOL journals format and onto my own website, www.sportsmediareview.com, in the next few days. Once there, I will have all sorts of better functionalities, including a much easier way for readers to leave comments. I will, of course, let you all know when I make that transition).

Tiki Barber, soon-to-be full-time broadcaster, has been doing a regular gig on FOX News “Fox and Friend First” every Tuesday morning from 6 am to 7 am. His co-hosts are Brian Kilmeade and Kiran Chetry.

I was curious about two things: 1) how is Tiki, in general, as a broadcaster/studio personality and 2) is there any indication of his ideological leanings, particularly whether he shares the general ideological predilections of the company for whom he currently works. To answer the second question first, Tiki did read copy repeating a variation on the FOX promotional slogan: “fair and balanced, as always.” And the fact that he did it without laughing out loud shows either that he buys the program or that he’s especially good at delivering punch lines with a straight face. Other than that, Tiki did not betray whatever his personal ideological proclivities are.

On the first question, Tiki acquitted himself well enough. He can read cue cards fluidly, appears comfortable in front of a camera and is capable of spontaneous banter. I know I am stating the obvious when I say that early morning television fare is, in general, dreck. And, FOX and Friends is more amateurish and, unsurprisingly, simple-minded even in comparison with its unimpressive competition, like the Today Show. More than the other shows, FOX and Friends segments appear to be an opportunity for the hosts to opine about the moral decline of America. On topics like whether Miss USA should be stripped of her crown because of her off-the-runway difficulties, or whether municipalities should be paying the costs of rescue efforts such as the one currently unfolding on Mount Hood, Kilmeade and Chetry weighed in on the larger principle at stake. I found it noteworthy that Tiki seemed always to keep his opinions to himself. He might pose a question or inject a point for discussion, but he never took a position on the issues his co-hosts were discussing.

“Tiki Tuesday” included a discussion of the brawl at the Garden Saturday night, featuring the author Don Yeager, who wrote Pros and Cons, an SI writer who wrote an expose of the all the criminal activity committed by NFL players. Tiki introduced the segment by asking whether the suspensions were too lenient and the discussion was framed around Yaeger’s contention that the fines and suspensions were not harsh enough to “teach the players a lesson.” Yaeger described the Palace brawl as “only two years ago” (as if a pro sports fight taking place once every two years is somehow excessive) and decried the fact that Stephen Jackson’s shooting incident this summer showed that his thirty game suspension for the 2004 brawl was too lenient. Tiki himself interjected that fines of a couple hundred grand are not a big deal for pro athletes and Yaeger jumped on that point. But, the collective bargaining agreement stipulates that a player is to lose 1/110th of his salary for every game he’s suspended. So, if ‘Melo is suspended for fifteen games, for example, he loses roughly one-seventh of his salary. Since Anthony makes about $16 million a year, the lost pay due to suspension comes out to something like $2.3 million. Now, the fact is that Anthony can afford that, but $2.3 million is certainly a stiff financial penalty for throwing a punch and it would be nice (though clearly too much to ask) for FOX to not make a mistake of this magnitude in discussing the severity of the financial penalties being doled out.

Kilmeade interjected to ask whether the NBA is, in fact, happy about the brawl because of all the publicity the fight is getting and Yaeger asserted that, yes, the NBA is happy. Mind you, the NBA has become convinced that its “thuggish” reputation is its single biggest marketing problem, but when you’re in a fact-free zone, like FOX, you don’t have to worry about such subtleties. (Yaeger did later acknowledge that Commissioner Stern was trying to avoid such incidents).

This is such exasperatingly stupid stuff that it seems unworthy of comment. The NBA obviously cracks down harder now on fighting than do other sports. There is no other league in which a player throwing a single punch, and one that didn’t cause any injury at all, would result in the player being suspended for twenty percent of the season. That is not a commentary on whether the NBA’s suspension of Carmelo Anthony was too harsh. If the league wants to make sure that this stuff simply never happens, it’s a justifiable penalty. But, there is just a complete lack of perspective here on how the fight Saturday night stacks up to fights in other sports.

Tiki, notably, had less to say about the fight than Yaeger, Kilmeade or Smith. Whether that’s because, as a pro athlete trying to show he’s something more than a pro athlete, he did not want to weigh in too much on a sports issue, or because he’s naturally deferential, or because he disagreed with the other three and didn’t want to say so out loud, I don’t know.

I haven’t had a chance to hear Tiki’s satellite radio show. Based on his appearance on the FOX show, Tiki’s playing it safe. By all accounts, he’s a highly intelligent person and, as an African-American, he’s an extreme rarity on non-sports cable or broadcast television news. It’s too bad, therefore, that we don’t hear more of what he has to say.

More on the Brawl

Dave Zirin has a good discussion of the coverage the brawl continues to receive and it was, perhaps, naive on my part, to think that it would readily blow over.

Zirin argues that the punishment far exceeds the crime in this case, and notes that fighting occurs in all sports without anything like the kind of attention that the fight Saturday night received.

Zirin pins the blame for this on Commissioner Stern:

"Stern is responsible for this holier-than-thou atmosphere. It was Stern who last year issued the infamous dress code, banning ostentatious gold chainsand medallions and mandating business casual attire off the court. It was Stern who instigated the "toughon whining" rules this season--if a player so much assneezes in a referee's direction, he gets tagged with a technical foul. It was Stern who last year hired Karl Rove's public relations operative Matthew Dowd to give the league "red-state appeal."

This approach, in my mind, is rooted in generational and racial anxiety, and efforts to assuage that anxiety among the folks who can afford the pricey tickets at Madison Square Garden. When Stern feeds the myth that players somehow are out of control and undercivilized, it gives confidence to the apostles of fear--like New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick, who wrote, "NBAers are showing up to speak at schools and
in airports and for TV interviews looking like recruitment officers for the Bloods and Crips."

Zirin's right to connect generational and racial anxieties - the two are both rooted in a lament about an idyllic by-gone era, in which respect for authority was unchallenged and athletes knew their place. That era happened to be an era with a white face, even if some of the participants were not actually white.

And, this undertone is simply missed by people like Stephen A., who on his radio show yesterday pre-emptively decried anybody who would dare call David Stern a racist for coming down hard on the participants in the brawl. Stephen A.'s main defense of Stern seemed to be that, on Stern's watch, NBA salaries have sky-rocketed. In other words, Stern is responsible for a lot of "brothers getting paid." Ipso facto, he's not a racist.

As, I have discussed before, this black and white understanding of the issue of race is one of the central obstacles to our ability to have a useful conversation about it. I have never heard or read a personal testimonial to the effect that Stern is a racist and, as I noted in an earlier discussion of the late Jeffrey Williams' brilliant account of race in the NBA, there's good reason to think that Stern has an impressive grasp of the complexity of race as it relates to the NBA.

But, the point isn't what David Stern does or doesn't personally believe. It's the perception of his league - as a gangstered up, black league - and how he's chosen to respond to that perception that gets to the core of how race works to condition the national conversation about the NBA. Some guys, like Chris Russo, are more or less honest about their disdain for the league's "blackness."

Here's a fact: in 2006, all the public opinion data we have, not to mention countless studies from political science, psychology, sociology and beyond on people's core beliefs, their voting habits, etc., tells us that race and racial resentment continue to be a powerful force in shaping our politics and our public conversations. Therefore, given everything we know, it's simply naive to fail to grasp the potential of the issue of race to shape our outlooks. The NBA is arguably the single most identifiably black, high profile institution in America. And, given what we know about race and racial attitudes in all other walks of life, it's far more of a stretch to discount the role race plays in how we perceive things like an NBA fight, than to acknowledge it as a factor.

Garden Brawl

I am sure you’re all aware of the brawl at MSG Saturday night, precipitated by a flagrant foul by the Knicks’ Mardy Collins on the Nuggets J. R. Smith. I think it’s a misnomer to call it a hard foul, because that implies that Collins, in the course of making a legitimate defensive play, also made significant, even intentional physical contact. Collins did make significant, intentional physical contact, but he was not, in my judgment making a legitimate defensive play. He was simply trying to take Smith’s head off while Smith was going in for a lay-up/dunk in the waning moments of a Nuggets’ rout. As first reported by ESPN.com’s Chris Sheridan, Collins may have been ordered to do what he did by Isiah, in retaliation for the Nuggets leaving all their starters in despite being up twenty with under two minutes left in the game.

Henry, at True Hoop, worries that this is exactly the kind of thing that will bring the racists out of the woodwork:

“This incident will probably pass without damaging the league too much, but it's not just an "oops." It's the kind of thing the league and players certainly can't afford to have happen very often. It really does hurt ticket sales, TV ratings, and the ability of most people to look up to these players.

And every now and again, after something like that, I'll hear some racist crack. Racists are always waiting for an opportunity to paint the NBA as a bunch of out-of-control black players. It kills me to have these highlights all over the TV, knowing racist idiots in sports bars somewhere are seeing them and feeling vindicated.

This kind of stuff costs the players and the league dignity, trust, and respect. Those things are essential to a good life, and they're hard to earn back.”

He wrote that in the immediate aftermath of the brawl, and perhaps when the returns from the sports talk radio precincts start coming in today, we’llhear more about that, but that has not been the emphasis of the coverage so far.

The Sports Reporters discussed the brawl yesterday morning on ESPN:

Mike Lupica considered Collins’ shot completely out of bounds, regardless of the score and situation.

Mitch Albom agreed with Lupica and lamented that “players seem to want to settle issues of ‘respect’ with their fists” and, along those lines, thought that the notion of committing a hard foul because you don’t want to be disrespected in your own building is ludicrous: “If you don’t want to get embarrassed, play better.” Lupica, Bob Ryan and host John Saunders all seemed to agree that Collins (and Isiah’s) reactions were far more worthy of contempt than the Nuggets running up the score. As Ryan put it, concerning Thomas’ complaints about who was on the floor at the end of the game for Denver, “he has enough trouble coaching his own team without telling someone else how to coach their’s.”

The speculation this morning is that ‘Melo will receive somewhere in the neighborhood of an 8-12 game suspension, while other principals, including Nate Robinson, Collins and Smith will be sat down for 3-5 games.

Albom wanted to see much harsher penalties – he argued that ‘Melo should be suspended through the first round of the playoffs. And, it’s clear that the league will be especially concerned about the image the fight projects – it’s the worst brawl since the 2004 melee in Detroit that could be said to have ushered in a new era in NBA history – call it the zero-tolerance, zero non-conformity era.

And, I know that the NHL has cracked down on fighting, but it’s still striking to me that people think a single fight in the NBA requires players to lose entire seasons when no one got hurt and no fans were involved, when hockey players fight all the time, and sometimes commit serious felonies on the ice without similar cries (except in the most extreme cases).

A lot of the focus is on whether Isiah Thomas, as mentioned above, ordered Collins to take outSmith.

After the game, Thomas said he told Anthony:

“I just said to him: ‘You’re up 19 with a minute and a half to go. You and Camby really shouldn’t be in the game right now.’ We had surrendered. And those guys shouldn’t have been in the game at that time,” Thomas said. “They were sticking it to us pretty good. They were having their way with us pretty good. I think J. R. Smith had just made one dunk where he reverses it and spins in the air. I thought that Mardy didn’t want to have our home crowd see that again and he fouled him.”

But, video of Thomas talking to Anthony just prior to the brawl appears to confirm what ‘Melo says Thomas told him, that it wouldn’t be a good idea for Anthony to go to into the lane.

The Daily News’ Frank Isola notes that Isiah and Denver Nuggets’ coach George Karl, who is Larry Brown’s best friend, have exchanged angry words before about Thomas’ treatment of Brown last season, and there’s talk that Karl left his players in late to show up Isiah. Isola also notes that Isiah has had run-ins with other teams over their tactics and approaches since the beginning of the season, including complaints about Bruce Bowen’s defensive tactics and complaints about the Pacers excessively celebrating on the Knicks’ home floor earlier in the season. He also traded insults with the Nets’ coaching staff during the pre-season.

Leaving aside the NBA’s reputation, which I think will not be especially adversely affected by this fight, a couple of key threads are beginning to emerge.

1) no one is giving Thomas any slack for complaining about the Nuggets’ leaving their players in. On Mike and Mike this morning, John Seibel and Mike Golic both echoed the sentiments of Albom – if you don’t want to be embarrassed, play better. The Knicks stink, everyone knows it, and Thomas’ complaining just sounds like sour grapes. Terry Frei of the Denver Post says Thomas is a “baby” and should be dealt with harshly by the league:

“The Knicks' president and coach should be banished from the bench for 20 games - plus receive a commensurate staggering fine, in case Thomas considers not having to coach the ragtag roster he has assembled to be a reward, not a punishment.

What a baby.

The Nuggets, with four starters still in the game when they led by 19 with 1:50 left, were pouring it on? What was this, a CYO league for 11-year-olds with a ban on full-court presses when the leads reach 20, and a mercy rule when they hit 40? Were the Knicks going to get treated to milkshakes at White Castle for trying hard in the face of adversity?”

If it’s true that Karl was trying to show up the Knicks, that is part a reflection of the lack of respect that, it seems, much of the league has for Isiah and Knicks’ management, who have turned one of the league’s signature franchises into a laughing-stock. And, it’s bad enough that Isiah, and his boss, Jim Dolan, are as incompetent as they are. What’s worse is the degree of their denial about their incompetence. With a payroll tens of millions of dollars larger than any other team, a forfeited lottery pick in 2006 and another forfeited one coming in 2007, not only are the Knicks terrible now. They’ve also locked themselves into a hole that will take at least three years to dig out of. In this context, Thomas had no good will going into this incident, and that’s been reflected in the coverage.

2) As, I mentioned above, I don’t this fight really says a whole lot about the league, or respect, or anything. Every sport has its brawls and the NBA has been notably tame the past couple of years. And, even this fight wasn’t really a serious fight. It was a lot of angry people running around, but little contact being made. But, it’s becoming clear that, aside from Isiah, it is shaping up as a statement about one of the league’s marquee young players, Anthony.

In the New York Times today, Liz Robbins writes:

“Carmelo Anthony wanted to be a first-time All-Star this season, and was playing like a most valuable player contender.

Anthony, the Denver Nuggets fourth-year forward, wanted to be equal to his draft classmates LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, and was outshining them this season by leading the N.B.A. in scoring.

He was the best player on the United States men’s basketball team at the world championship last summer, when he remade his image on the court.

And after spending $1.5 million to open a youth center with his name on it in Baltimore on Thursday, Anthony, 22, appeared to have the N.B.A. in the palm of his hand.

But with one close-fisted punch Saturday night, he might have undone all the good he had created.”

How Anthony is judged in this, therefore, doesn’t just affect the Nuggets (who will be losing their star player for a while) and Anthony. It affects the league as well. In this regard, I thought Anthony’s statement of apology was noteworthy. From ESPN.com, here it is:

“Last night's altercation with the Knicks escalated further than it should have. I take full responsibility for my actions in the matter," Anthony said in a statement. "In the heat of the moment I let my emotions getthe best of me. I apologize to the fans, the Denver Nuggets, the NBA, my mother, and my family for the embarrassment I have caused them. I ask you all for your forgiveness.

"I also want to make a personal apology to Mardy Collins and his family. My actions were inexcusable, and I am sorry for making this an even more embarrassing situation.

"What makes this all the more painful is that this was one of the biggest weeks of my life. I just realized one of my biggest dreams when we opened the Youth Center in Baltimore that bares my name. To see the community excited and hundreds of kids smiling was an incredible feeling. Now the thought of thousands of kids seeing this incident on TV pains me. This is not the example I want to set.

"It's my hope that we work to move forward from this event, and never let something like this happen again.”

What’s noteworthy here isn’t the apology itself, but the reminder of the good works that Anthony is engaged in. I have certainly seen apologies before that insert some generic disclaimer like: “I hope I am not judged on this one bad act” or something to that effect. But, to provide details about Anthony’s charitable activities in an apology about an unrelated on-court incident strikes me as novel.

Anthony’s got damage control to do, but he’ll survive this incident, reputation more or less intact (as long as it doesn’t happen again). Isiah, on the other hand, continues to be the least respected executive in the NBA, and no amount of hard-fouling by Mardy Collins, or any other Knick, is going to change that.

Update:

Mike and the Mad Dog are talking with their callers about the brawl. For them, the two unforgiveable actors in this are Anthony (he's just been suspended for 15 games) and Nate Robinson (suspended for ten games for, essentially, being the third man in).

One caller called into say that the brawl Saturday night was all about the "hip hop culture." Russo responded that: "well, we knew this would come up – now this gets into a whole different area” and Francesa jumped into say that there's been fighting in the NBA for a long time. He recalled fights between Kevin McHale and Kurt Rambis, Happy Hairston and Kareem in 1972, and many others besides. Russo interjected that he thought there was something tothis "hip hop" thing. A subsequent caller said he was offended by the claim that this was about a "culture" and argued that no one attributed all the fighting in the NHL to "rock and roll culture." Russo told the caller that that was an unfair charge because a) the NHL has cleaned the game up and b) because when the NHL had all that fighting, he and Francesa used to kill it.

Of course, the key issue the caller raises is not whether people considered the fighting in the NHL bad. Instead, it's whether the NHL's fighting was attributable to a larger culture, the way any NBA incident is automatically painted as a cultural issue.

But, despite Russo's evident beliefs about the NBA, there's a fascinating dynamic going on right now. Francesa and Russo are clearly sensitive to callers overstating the case against the NBA. When one caller described the players who fought as "thugs" who are showing their true mentality, Francesa and Russo attacked him, describing him as going too far and saying that he's painting every NBA player with too broad a brush. In addition, in a theme that the two have been airing a lot lately (and which I have discussed numerous times), Francesa in particular has been harping on the double standard that lets the NFL get away with murder. Francesa has asked, several times this hour, what would have happened if an NBA player had just had his bodyguard killed three days after himself having been arrested on weapons charges? (this is what happened to the Bears' Tank Johnson last week).

So, Francesa and Russo are certainly willing to concede that the NBA is subject to heightened scrutiny for its transgressions. For Francesa, the reason is that people just don't like the NBA anymore, though he won't say that it's because of race. Russo will say it's about race, but will still bristle at callers who consider race to be an unfair basis for the harsh reaction to the NBA.