Playoff Basketball or Patty Cake?

The NBA has managed to police itself into a g^*damn joke. This is not hyerbole. A friggin’ mockery. If this weren’t a family-friendly site, believe me I’d have choicer words, but you get the point. I usually try to avoid waxing poetic on topics that have already been beaten to death to some degree by a broad variety of journalists and commentators. In this case, it merits even further discussion.

For those who’ve been with us awhile, this is a familiar theme that’s been espoused upon within these virtual pages time and again and again. Now, the epidemic has reach unprecedented levels of ridiculousness in the Association. Every day is another column, story or decision handed down by the league office regarding fouls. So and so’s flagrant one has been downgraded to a flagrant two…such and such has been charged a retroactive personal foul…xyz has been handed a technical foul for what was previously called a personal foul.

It’s all a joke. You can blame it on the officiating in the sense that the NBA offices are decreeing fouls and such that were not even whistled during the game, but that of course is not the bigger issue. The bigger issue is the watering down of competitive basketball. Fans say there’s nothing like the playoffs — across all of the major sports. The reason is simple. Tremendous teams and athletes often playing at their best in the most competitive season of the year, all vying for the highest reward in their respective sports. They play harder, there’s more emotion, there is no letting up. Gifted, competitive athletes going 100MPH. Things will happen. It’s science.

It used to be we were taught certain things about sports, about being teammates, about competition, about intensity. On the basketball court, hard fouls used to be part of the game. No easy layups. But in its overzealous quest to repair whatever image problems the NBA still feels are so threatening, the league has zapped the playoffs of some of its juice. The fact that we’re counting technical fouls and discussing potential suspensions is an embarrassment. Most of these technical fouls should not have even been called.

Anyway, I’m starting to ramble but you feel me, right? In thinking about this more, I’ve come up with a framework that could make things better. It’s simple, perhaps too much so (OK, obviously so). Who knows, maybe this would turn the NBA into a battle royale, but something needs to be done.

Simply put, there should be three types of fouls (in my humble opinion) with the following very formal, airtight and scientific definitions which leave no room for interpretation (ha).

PERSONAL FOUL: Any foul committed in the normal course of basketball activity in a highly-competitive elite professional league. This includes people running into each other and tumbling into stands, guys taking a hand to the face via a missed block attempt, a foul committed on a driving player in mid-air in an attempt to keep them from converting an easy basket, etc. Each player is allowed six of these a game. Brilliant, right?

TECHNICAL FOUL: Technical fouls are to be assessed for violations committed outside the normal flow of an NBA game that blatantly break any long-standing rules. For example, if a player were to throw a hip-check to an opponent behind the action or bitch-slap them after going nose-to-nose and engaging in some talk about the other’s mother. Another example could be a leg whip committed on a player cutting to the basket. A punch in the mouth or kick would also qualify.

INTENTIONAL FOUL: The intentional foul is reserved for those acts committed against defenseless players where no attempt is being made at the ball. This is basically the breakaway “clear path” call. If a player is on a fast break and you push them from behind and risk breaking that player’s neck on the stanchion, such is an intentional foul.

That’s it. Personal, technical, intentional. No flagrants, ones, twos or otherwise. No suspensions for taking a step off the bench. No additional penalty because you weigh 200-something pounds and ran into another man who can leap 40 inches off the ground, and that dude fell on the floor hard and bruised their hip. I’ve had it.

There, I feel much better now.