Elliotte Friedman, host of the CFL on CBC, wrote this response to my Video of the Day post in his “From the Pressbox” blog.
The underlying commentary here is that hockey players are forgiven because they are (mostly) white and basketball players are punished because they are (mostly) black. Sorry, but that’s not the major reason here.
Friedman brings up three points:
- The culture of the NHL and NBA.
- The proximity to fans during NBA fights.
- The NHL does not have a bad image, unlike the NBA and NFL.
Culture.
“Fact: fighting is not acceptable in basketball. It is acceptable, to a point, in hockey. Whether or not you agree with its existence in the NHL is immaterial to this particular argument. Right now, it remains the only major team sport where you can throw punches and stay in the game. And, if you saw George Parros politely ask Georges Laraque to dance, you know that many of the NHL’s fights aren’t exactly thuggish.
Yes, sometimes ?The Code? leads to moronic, cement-headed behaviour. But, until the NHL comes right out and says, ?If you fight, you are gone,? then there is room for it. Under the NBA’s rules, anyone who fights is ejected. Anyone who throws a punch is ejected. Anyone who makes deliberate contact with an elbow above shoulder level gets ejected.”
The defense: fighting in the NHL is so commonplace that it becomes acceptable. After all, if a fight breaks out where fights break out all the time, then its not a big deal. When fights break out in the NBA, where fighting is rare, it’s glaring, shocking and disturbing — that’s why more people pay attention.
David Stern, NBA commissioner:
On its face, a valid point. But consider this: if fighting were commonplace in the NBA, how would the league be viewed? Already, with major fights occurring about once every two years (compared to much more frequent fights in baseball and hockey), the league is viewed as a haven for gang members and criminals. Common sense seems to indicate that if people already think the NBA is filled with thugs, that view would only be exacerbated if fighting occurred as often as it does in the NHL.
So, all things being equal and both leagues having the exact same amount of fighting, the NBA would be viewed as a league of thugs with a heavy criminal element — by contrast to the NHL, where a fight is simply a fight and generally not a big deal.
That seems to indicate that the perception of fighting goes far beyond the fights themselves.
Proximity to the crowd.
“Stern is very consistent about this. Remember the brutal Pacers-Pistons brawl from November 2004? (How could you forget?) Then-Pacer Ron Artest charged into the crowd after on-court hostilities cooled because some idiot tossed a cup of ice at him. Now, there is no excusing that fan`s actions. But Stern suspended Artest for 86 games ? including playoffs ? because he led the charge into the crowd. (It remains the longest ban in NBA history.) Eight other players got a combined 70 games. The commish practically ruined the Pacers season by suspending three key players for lengthy periods.”
When it comes to crowd proximity, there is nothing comparable in hockey. Fans are segregated from the ice by glass barriers, preventing any Nate Robinson/JR Smith spillover into the first row.
In the NBA, there have been two player-fan altercations — Vernon Maxwell attacking a fan in 1995 and the Pacers/Pistons brawl in 2004. Those are the only two physical player fan altercations (Antonio Davis’ misguided attempt to check on his wife was not violent in nature). There is no disputing that several NBA fights have spilled into the first row (the 1994 Knicks/Bulls fight comes to mind).
But this particular complaint, of players endangering fans, never comes into the conversation when dealing with the only other sport to have a remotely intimate setting between player and fan. Major League Baseball has had multiple player-fan incidences; in 2005, Gary Sheffield took a swing at a fan in Boston’s Fenway Park, in the short porch in right field. Sheffield could have easily thrown — and connected on — a punch, considering the height of the fence. A better example is when several L.A. Dodgers entered the stands in a brawl against the Chicago Cubs in 2000; 19 players were suspended for 84 games, and yet no baseball brawl, no matter how ugly, gets the kind of attention an NBA brawl gets.
Frank Francisco threw a chair into the stands, breaking a woman’s nose, and yet baseball brawls do not get talked about on NBC Nightly News, and Brian Williams doesn’t feel the need to ask if “sportsmanship is dead”.
Fan/player intimacy is at its height in NBA games, but is by no means unique in the world of sports. There have been fan/player brawls in Major League Baseball, and yet baseball brawls go relatively unnoticed in the sports world.
The perceptions of these fan/player incidents is different in the NBA than in any other sport. The fact that the NBA isn’t alone in player/fan fighting or player/fan proximity indicates that it isn’t the closeness of the fans to the action that is the problem.
Image.
“One NHL writer recently argued that the league deserved more attention from American sports fans because its players aren’t consistently getting arrested. I don’t agree with that.
But I do feel that fans are wondering if the NFL and NBA plan to expand to the penal league. To me, this is the biggest issue. …
This kind of stuff just isn’t happening in the NHL. There is not the volume of arrests; nowhere near a similar number of legal problems.”
Friedman cites the various legal problems of the Cincinnati Bengals, Pac-Man Jones, the recently completed NBA All Star Weekend, the Portland Trailblazers and the Indiana Pacers.
This is the weakest justification for the magnified coverage of NBA fights. How do the off-the court problems of a minority of players warrant different coverage? A fight is a fight, and even if one were to use criminal acts as a justification, none of the players involved in the Nuggets/Knicks tilt is involved in violent crime (unless one were to stretch even further to include Carmelo Anthony’s appearance in a “Stop Snitchin'” drug dealer video). This is an incredible reach, using the perception that NBA players are thugs and criminals.
Friedman makes my point for me, essentially saying that people cover NBA fights more because NBA players are thugs and criminals. This is the mentality of the media. People look at NBA players, and they see, to quote Ken Levine of The Huffington Post, “mean, arrogant, scary looking, tattooed, prison inmates.” Whether that’s true or not, that’s the perception — one that ties directly into race.
Using that perception, magnifying the criminal backgrounds of a minority of the players, the media paints NBA fights as dangerous, criminal events where the innocent fans are threatened.
Conclusion.
“Look, the NHL isn’t perfect. Far from it. But to say it’s getting a break here because it’s a white league is B.S.”
The NHL is not getting a break because the majority of its players are white. The NBA is getting criticized because the majority of its players are black.
