Basic NBA Instinct
Bill Simmons on the stupid NBA rule about leaving the bench:
That's the NBA in a nutshell: they want to market the individual physical talents of players, yet keep their individual personalities (which, ironically, make their playmaking all the more entertaining) in check to the point that they're basically athletic robots. In other words: 450 players who play like LaBron but act like Tim Duncan. Yippee-ki-yay.
Alas, as Simmons has stated, it's the rule and until it's changed NBA players and fans have to live with it.
Let's say you're one of the best seven players on the Phoenix Suns. You love Nash -- he's your emotional leader, your meal ticket to the Finals, the ideal teammate and someone who makes you happy to play basketball every day for a living. He's killing himself to win a championship. His nose was split open in Game 1. His back bothers him to the point that he has to lie down on the sidelines during breaks. He's battling a real cheap-shot artist (Bruce Bowen) who's trying to shove and trip him on every play. But he keeps coming and coming, and eventually everyone follows suit. Just as things were falling apart in Game 4 and you were staring at the end of your season, he willed you back into the game and saved the day.
Suddenly, he gets body-checked into a press table for no real reason on an especially cheap play. You're standing 20 feet away. Instinctively, you run a few steps toward the guy who did it -- after all, your meal ticket is lying on the court in a crumpled heap -- before remembering that you can't leave your bench. So you go back and watch everything else unfold from there. Twenty-four hours later, you get suspended for Game 5 because your instincts as a teammate kicked in for 1.7 seconds.
Think about how dumb this is. What kind of league penalizes someone for reacting like a good teammate after his franchise player just got decked? Imagine you're playing pickup at a park, you're leading a game 10-3, your buddy is driving for the winning layup, and some stranger clotheslines your buddy from behind and knocks him into the metal pole. Do you react? Do you take a couple of steps toward him? I bet you do. For the NBA to pretend it can create a fairy-tale league in which these reactions can be removed from somebody's DNA -- almost like a chemical castration -- I mean, how stupid is that?
That's the NBA in a nutshell: they want to market the individual physical talents of players, yet keep their individual personalities (which, ironically, make their playmaking all the more entertaining) in check to the point that they're basically athletic robots. In other words: 450 players who play like LaBron but act like Tim Duncan. Yippee-ki-yay.
Alas, as Simmons has stated, it's the rule and until it's changed NBA players and fans have to live with it.
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