Men Who Love Goons...

There we go the grandaddy of the losing SportsJournalists.com arguments.....

"IT IS JUST DIFFERENT, BECAUSE IT IS DIFFERENT......."

You forgot the "foof" part....

And forget about the Pacers-Pistons brawl, what about the fight in Denver -- where Carmello Anthony barely slapped someone and got 15 games and was treated by certain members of the media -- Jay Marriotti, Skip Bayliss to name a few since we must always cite examples -- and by ESPN in general as a thug and treated like he had murdered someone for the next two weeks.

And here -- since we must always cite examples -- is an excerpt from that irrational columnist Michael Wilbon, who apparantly is making sweeping generalizations as well......

You can sugar-coat this any way you want but the bottom line is: A black league has to be palatable to white patrons. And black multimillionaires swinging at each other isn't part of the equation. If Stern doesn't send the message that the league has zero tolerance, it's incredibly bad business.

Still, you'll have to excuse me for expressing a bit of cynicism here.

Of the four major team sports in America, basketball has the least amount of fighting. The NHL sells fighting, promotes and glorifies it. Major League Baseball can't go two weeks without somebody rushing the mound to start a bench-clearing brawl, and suspensions are minimal. Pro football, in what seems almost an outgrowth of the mandatory contact, has its skirmishes and fights all the time. Basketball hasn't had a fight in two years.

So, fighting's okay in baseball but not basketball? Why? Fighting is cool for the NHL, but not the NBA? Why?

Because the NBA is the only one of those leagues that's perceived as being a "black league." The NFL is more than 60 percent black, but enough of its stars are white that you would never hear anybody, regardless of the percentages, refer to the NFL as a "black league." If black participation drops any more in Major League Baseball, it'll rival the overwhelmingly white NHL. I don't hear any great outcry for suspending pitchers or hitters for a meaningful number of games when there's a beanball war, even if the participants are men of color.

No, this fighting issue and the way it attaches itself to the players is the NBA's burden to bear. "Those thugs" are going to have to be more red-state friendly in order to sell seats, much less jerseys and shoes. NBA players are the most identifiable of professional athletes. They make the most money. They've got the most intimate relationship with the patrons. They've got the longest shelf life.

I'm not about to feel sorry for them because they're being held to what seems to me to be a different standard.

 

What does any of that have to do with self control and the ability to control your emotions to the point where you don't resort to fighting?

Oh that's right, nothing.

The level of physical play -- and the NBA is far more physical of a league than most people could even fathom -- in a sport is meaningless to this discussion.

Why is it OK in the eyes of many in the media for white hockey players to fight but it is not OK in the eyes of many of the same media members for basketball players to fight?

What is different about the two groups -- well, other than one group is black and part of that scary hip hop culture......

 

Zag, that Jones piece is convincing on the surface, but makes the same mistake of ignoring the counter historical evidence that you do. Here's how Jones states his premise:

"Here’s a sports axiom–the level of fighting tolerated by a sport is inversely proportional to the number of black folks in the sport.

Don’t believe me? Let’s order by proportion of black players. Going greatest to least.

Basketball
Football
Baseball
Hockey

Now, let’s look the levels on which fighting is tolerated in sports. Going from greatest to least.

Hockey
Baseball
Football
Basketball

Challenge that assumption as you like, seeing how it’s difficult to measure tolerance."

I'd agree that is damning evidence that race dictates how we percieve fighting in sports --- IF you could show that fighting in all 4 sports was once percieved the same when they had the same racial composition and perceptions changed only when basketball and football became blacker.

But that's NOT really the case. If you'd asked the 2d question 50 years ago, when all four leagues were lily white, I'm guessing the results would show the exact same hockey, baseball, football, basketball order. Fighting didn't become more acceptable in hockey than basketball only after the leagues' racial compositions became so different, it was ALREADY that way when the leagues had virtually the SAME composition. That obviously indicates that there's something else besides race here, that both you and Jones ignore, that helps explain those differing perceptions.

 

Did you actually read what I said?

I said that the most publicized incidents of hockey "fighting" shown on ESPN aren't about fighting at all. They're all about thuggery. Same as the Palace brawl. Had nothing to do with either racism or fighting.

Anybody who tries to draw a comparable between fighting in basketball, baseball and football to hockey should excuse themselves from the discussion because they don't know jack about hockey.

It's a dumb comparable and has nothing to do with race.

 

Zag.....you obviously know nothing about hockey, so stop. And yes, fighting is within the rules of hockey, the rule book states there is a penalty for fighting, penalties are like fouls in basketball, or a ref throwing a flag in football.

 

No, you are absolutely wrong-- I have a great book I am trying to find right now to put some excerpts on here -- it is about the history of the NBA and how back in the 50's when it first started some of the "hard-nosed, scrappy guys" who played and how fights weren't that unusual.

Perceptions of fighting in the NBA really began to change in the late 1960's and early 1970's -- which is about the time the real influx of black players hit and the ABA merged, making the NBA even "blacker" for lack of a better term.

In fact, perceptions of the league as being "too black" are a big reason why the NBA Finals were still on tape delay into the 1980's before David Stern and his marketing machine took over and worked to change those perceptions.

The NBA was viewed much differently in the 1950's than it is now. So you are dead wrong when you say that fighting wasn't treated and viewed differently in the early days in basketball than it is now because that absolutely was.

 

One chapter in the story, the writer goes to see the Caps and Penguins, hoping to see Georges Laraque and Donald Brashear -- two black men -- fight as "man's men, tough guys."

Yeah, racist sport, I tell you.

 

Because the rules and traditions of the respective sports basically say it--and ALWAYS have--even when there was no significant difference in racial makeup. Why is that so hard for you to comprehend?

 

So I suppose since fighting is an ejection -- a penalty -- in basketball it is a part of basketball too?

And forget about the palace brawl and the Bertuzzi stick thing, those were different animals all together for various reasons (though the discussions that followed both were far different with a far different tone) - I am talking about the hockey fights that are on ESPN EVERY SINGLE NIGHT and celebrated as some sort of part of the game and yet, when two basketball players fight -- like they did in Denver (notice how I just have to name a city and everone knows exactly what fight I am talking about -- which should tell you a whole lot about this issue) and fans aren't involved and very few punches are landed -- it is still treated like a referendum on race, culture, hip hop violence and black America.

To deny this is foolish, but I know I know, this is a far more thoughtful line of reasoning that you have been left with now that I have cited examples and asked you questions which make you uncomfortable.......

IT IS JUST DIFFERENT, IT IS AND YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND HOCKEY.......

 

Reading Zag's arguments is like watching a dog chase its tale.

Let's try this another way: hockey is the only sport where each team has at least one roster spot for a guy who can fight. Period.The only difference is nowadays they expect them to chip in their four minutes of ice time as part of the "energy line".

 

Fighting is part of one game's history and culture. In another, it's not.

How it's so hard for you to see that, zag, is beyond me.

 

You know what, Zag?

Rag on about racism in the NBA all you want, OK?

But don't drag hockey into it. One has nothing to do with the other.