Random reacts of violence leave players flagrantly flummoxed
HOUSTON -- Rajon Rondo slaps Brad Miller in the face with an open hand, keeping the Bulls center from tying a first-round playoff game at the end of overtime and drawing blood at the same time. No flagrant foul, no ejection, no windup or follow-through from Rondo, said the NBA office, and thus no suspension.
Trevor Ariza swings for the ball and makes contact with that -- and Rudy Fernandez's head, sending the Trail Blazers' guard twirling in the air like a helicopter blade. It was an attempt to stop a breakaway layup in the third quarter of a regular-season game between Portland and the Lakers. Flagrant foul, penalty two, and an ejection for Ariza. Fernandez was carted off on a stretcher, and the Lakers' Lamar Odom was suspended one game for leaving the bench.
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| This Trevor Ariza foul on March 9 sent Rudy Fernandez to the hospital. (Getty Images) |
That play happened on the same night when the Lakers' Derek Fisher -- a model citizen and president of the National Basketball Players Association -- was ejected and suspended one game for essentially delivering a football-style crack-back block on the Rockets' Luis Scola.
Pau Gasol attacks the basket for a layup attempt in the final minute of a second-round playoff game that was already decided Friday night and had his shot blocked by Ron Artest. The Rockets' lightning rod received a flagrant foul, penalty two, and was ejected for the second straight game. Even the Lakers were vehemently arguing Saturday that the play should've been ruled a personal foul and nothing more -- not even a less serious flagrant one, which doesn't call for an automatic ejection.
The NBA later downgraded the penalty and announced that Artest would not be suspended for Game 4 on Sunday.
Confused? So are the coaches and players. But for once, this isn't the garden-variety politicking that is just as much a part of the NBA playoffs as scantily clad dancers, T-shirt tosses and fire-breathing backboards. There is legitimate concern among players and coaches that the line between a hard foul, a flagrant, a technical, and an ejection has been irreparably blurred.
"It's something that must be addressed, because it's all over the place," the Lakers' Kobe Bryant said Saturday. "It's just so subjective, it's ridiculous."
When Bryant and the league office are coming to Artest's defense, and when Lakers coach Phil Jackson -- the ultimate partisan lobbyist when it comes to playoff officiating -- is arguing for the opponent, that is all the evidence you need to see that the NBA has a problem.
"I think if we asked the players what they would think [defined a flagrant], I think they would have no idea," Jackson said. "I think they know about the neck, but where does it stop? ... Even the guys announcing the game have no idea. Is it a foul? A flagrant one? A flagrant two? And then they're surprised when it's a flagrant two or no flagrant at all."
Complaints about playoff officiating -- star calls, favoritism, and the like -- have shown up reliably as Kobe in the fourth quarter and, frankly, have been easy to dismiss as blatant politicking. But this is different. With the abundance of plays necessitating rulings by the league this postseason, and with the perceived inconsistency from one ruling to the next, the issue has emerged as the No. 1 hot button topic in these playoffs.
Columnists and pundits can weigh in all they want, but the most important opinions -- those of the players trying to navigate games that are more physical and fast-paced than ever -- are coming through loud and clear.
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| Ron Artest's flagrant two on Paul Gasol was reduced to a flagrant one. (Getty Images) |
Even Gasol, the alleged victim of Artest's ejection-worthy foul at the end of Game 2, was surprised by the ruling on the court, which was upheld by crew chief Steve Javie on replay review. The league acknowledged Jackson's point -- that the on-floor officials "made more of it than it was" -- by downgrading it to a less-severe flagrant one. But Gasol wasn't even sure the play warranted more than a personal foul.
"It was a hard foul in the air," Gasol said. "I think I got hit a little bit in the head. It didn't hurt me or anything. I hit the floor, got up, and I understand the situation was frustrating for them. They lost the game at home and down the stretch, it's tough."
Artest said Javie justified the flagrant-two ruling by telling him Gasol "hit the floor awkwardly." But that didn't hold water for Gasol's own teammate, Bryant, who said, "I don't know what the hell that has to do with the foul. I thought it was a good, hard foul. I wouldn't give him a flagrant one for it. ... A guy's going in for a layup. What the hell are you supposed to do? It's a hard foul, and if a guy falls awkwardly, it's a flagrant?"
He's right. If the league allows the awkwardness of a player's fall to become a flagrant threshold, we will no doubt have players attempting to draw flagrant calls by falling awkwardly on purpose -- a sort of high-stakes version of the flopping game.
"Then they're just pansies," Bryant said, "and I have no respect for them."
Jackson said the tenor of the debate and confusion about how the rules are being interpreted is "going away from standard of the playoffs, the way these flagrant fouls are being distributed. It really concerns us as teams go forward in the playoffs to three rounds, four rounds, when players have to play with their hands in their pockets."
In fairness, referees have made plenty of good judgments in playoff games – not ejecting Rondo for tossing the Bulls' Kirk Hinrich into the scorer's table, which resulted in no further escalation in the game, and recognizing Friday night that the Rockets' Von Wafer had initiated contact in the air with Sasha Vujacic by pump-faking and jumping into him. But on a plethora of other plays, the long-held, unwritten rule -- no layups in the playoffs -- has collided with several other trends to make this a topic that is crying out for action, or at least clarification, from the league:
• The players are bigger: And faster. And they play above the rim more than ever before.
• Rules changes: They consistently favor offensive play have opened up the game and made it more fast-paced and more fun to watch. But in the playoffs, those trends conflict with some stubborn habits, such as the desire to protect the basket more forcefully than in the regular season.
• The relative size of players involved in a potentially flagrant play: Should the standard be different when a spindly point guard (Rondo) fouls a 7-footer (Miller), as opposed to when a burly, inaccurately labeled "small" forward (Artest) fouls a 7-footer (Gasol)?
• The score of the game: Should the standard for a flagrant be different on a play that could decide the game, versus an inconsequential one in a blowout? "That's probably what happened in that Boston game where Rondo fouled Brad Miller going in and hit him right in the face and they didn't even call a flagrant," Gasol said. "The game was so close at the time that a flagrant might have changed the result of the game. [Friday] night, the game was pretty much resolved and it probably wasn't necessary to foul that way, you can say."
• The league's emphasis on protecting players' heads and necks from excessive contact: Some elbows (Dwight Howard's on Samuel Dalembert in the Orlando-Philadelphia series) are suspendable, while others (Bryant's on Artest in the Lakers-Rockets series) are not.
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| Derek Fisher drew a one-game suspension for leveling Luis Scola. (Getty Images) |
"When we played, you just didn't give layups up," Rambis said. "You gave hard fouls. That was just part of the game. There were no flagrant fouls called at that time, but you just attacked people's arms. You didn't let them get the ball up above their head.
"When it comes to a flagrant foul call, the NBA, their judgment has to be, in my mind, whether or not there was malicious intent. In any sport that you play where there's contact, there's going to be injuries. There's going to be guys hurt as a result of that. That's unfortunate. But I think the line has to be drawn whenever it becomes overly excessive and when there's malicious intent."
Judging intent -- or, as Jackson put it, "knowing the mind of the perpetrator" -- is next to impossible. Unfairly judging Artest's intent, given his fertile history of transgressions, no doubt played a role in each of his ejections in the Lakers-Rockets series -- one of which resulted from nothing more than verbal sparring with Bryant.
Knowing the mind of the commissioner tells us more about where the NBA came from and where it is now. With his iron-fisted attempts to beautify and sanitize the game -- not to mention his commitment to minimizing serious, preventable injuries -- David Stern has virtually eliminated fighting from the NBA with his zero-tolerance approach to blows to the head and leaving the bench during a fight. Now Stern has another issue to deal with, and he must join forces with his owners at the next Board of Governors meeting -- if not sooner -- to address the confusion.
"I don't have a good answer for it," said the Rockets' Shane Battier, a voice of reason in this cloud of ambiguity. "But it would be nice to get some dialogue and get some discussion and some real talk -- not just lip service -- to address it. Because it does take away from the game. That's the unfortunate thing. ... Everybody's friend, Stu Jackson, has found his way into the headlines, although a little too often for everyone's desire. I like Stu. He's a nice guy. But it's nice when we don't hear from him."
