Rounding up the reaction to last night’s Denver Nuggets – New York Knicks altercation.
- Mike Lupica is blaming the Knicks for last night’s fight.
- Mitch Albom wants Carmelo Anthony suspended for the first round of the playoffs.
- J.W. Stewart on ESPNews last night: “Another black eye for the NBA”; possibly forgetting that a fight just as bad happened between the Cubs and White Sox this year, without it being a black eye for Major League Baseball.
- Mike Celzic is one of the few sportswriters who’ll take a rational view of this; his MSNBC piece acknowledges the fact that baseball has had plenty of brawls in the last two years, as has hockey.
- MSNBC.com last night: Nuggets and Knicks “explode in brawl”.
- SI.com’s Marty Burns: Carmelo “[n]ow… faces the likelihood of a long suspension — and becoming known by countless sports fans across America as the guy who threw the punch in the NBA’s latest embarrassing scene.”
- SI.com’s Chris Mannix: “You want to know why parents don’t bring their kids to games? See how that brawl spilled into the first row? Maybe because parents think there is a danger of an errant fist winding up in their kids face. You want to make things better? Put the league on notice, let everyone know that no deed goes unpunished. Make the price of violence so heavy no one wants to pay it. Only then will you see real results.”
- ESPN.com’s Marc Stein: “Stern has been exerting his authority more than ever since the infamous Detroit-Indiana brawl at the Palace of Auburn Hills on Nov. 19, 2004. Keeping that in mind, it wouldn’t be a shocker to see all of those estimates [of fairly short suspensions] fall short.”
- Henry Abbott of TrueHoop essentially says what I’ve been feeling:
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.
