{"id":18457,"date":"2018-01-30T11:34:03","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T16:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=18457"},"modified":"2018-01-30T13:27:35","modified_gmt":"2018-01-30T18:27:35","slug":"nba-or-mma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2018\/01\/30\/nba-or-mma\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA or MMA?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0Anyone who has been paying attention to the NBA this year has seen the headlines and replays, and the spotlight has been stolen by all the fights.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Bobby Portis vs. Nikola Mirotic, Serge vs. James Johnson, Dragic vs. DeRozan and Livingston vs. Referee are just a few of the scuffles seen so far.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0This is a major difference from recent years, as basketball has transitioned into the AAU era where every pro has known each other since they were young. Most played together in their childhood, either on the same team or meeting at tournaments, so everyone seems to be friends. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Sports pundits everywhere have said this has caused the \u201cend of true rivalries.\u201d Most of the players also appear to only want to team up with other stars.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\"NBAMy question is, why is this happening, and is it going to end anytime soon? I mean, surely the NBA doesn\u2019t want the players in fist fights, this isn\u2019t hockey, and is basketball even considered a contact sport? Players fighting makes the league look bad, and it makes the players look like thugs, right? Or instead does it drive viewership and help to recreate the rivalries we have been missing? Is the NBA listening to us and trying to solve their steady decline in TV ratings?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0In the 1995-96 season, the NBA\u2019s average viewership was rated at 5.0, which loosely means that 5 percent of the U.S. population was watching nationally broadcast games. Obviously, this probably has something to do with the Michael Jordan led Chicago Bulls, but when compared to the 2016-17 season getting an average rating of 1.9 there has to be more to the problem. It\u2019s not like we don\u2019t have stars as big as Jordan now, and the Warriors are just as good in this generation as the Bulls were in their generation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Whether that problem is just that Jordan was more liked than LeBron, or Durant, or Curry, or whoever, or if it is because of the concentration of talent remains to be seen. However it doesn\u2019t really matter. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The NBA can\u2019t force teams to spread the talent out without a potential change in the salary cap, and that can only happen with the approval of the NBA Players Association. They won\u2019t do this because it would mean the players ultimately get paid less. So, what existed then that doesn\u2019t now? <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\"NBAThe answer is simple: FIGHTS. Back then it was great to watch Bill Laimbeer viciously throw someone on the ground and start a brawl on the court, or Charles Oakley getting in countless battles, or even in more recent years the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons starting the \u201cMalice at the Palace\u201d where Ron Artest famously punched out a Pistons fan. As gruesome as it may be, it makes great TV. And the NBA DESPERATELY needs to produce great TV.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The NBA wants these fights, and they\u2019re telling us all that through their actions. Player suspensions are a joke these days. After the above mentioned \u201cMalice at the Palace\u201d, Ron Artest was suspended for the rest of the season, which amounted to 86 total games, and Stephen Jackson got 30 games. Latrell Sprewell was once suspended for 68 games for punching a coach, and in 1977 Kermit Washington was suspended for 26 games for punching Rockets player Rudy Tomjanovich in the face. Even Carmelo Anthony got 15 games for fighting once. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The longest suspension for fighting this season was eight games, which was Bobby Portis who fought a teammate at practice before the season started. Not a single other fight got anything over six games, even when the Houston Rockets players forced their way into the Clippers locker room to fight, or when Shaun Livingston head-butted a referee!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Case in point, if the NBA wanted the fights to stop this year they would impose heavier suspensions on players. Plain and simple. Actions speak louder than words, NBA. Your actions say fights are acceptable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paul Helmers<\/strong>
\nReporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0Anyone who has been paying attention to the NBA this year has seen the headlines and replays, and the spotlight has been stolen by all the fights. \u00a0 \u00a0Bobby Portis vs. Nikola Mirotic, Serge vs. James Johnson, Dragic vs. DeRozan and Livingston vs. Referee are just a few of the scuffles seen so far. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":18465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2114,2109,2107,3],"tags":[1392,695,164,200,2085],"class_list":["post-18457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-opinion","category-sports","category-tartan-news","tag-basketball","tag-fights","tag-mma","tag-nba","tag-paul-helmers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/NBA-or-MMA-youtube2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-4NH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18457"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18472,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18457\/revisions\/18472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}