Stoudamire and Diaw should not have lef the bench area. They did, end of story. Suspensions were deserved.

This reminds me of the NHL incident this year in the Minnesota-Anaheim series, where Brad May (a fourth-line thug for Anaheim) sucker-punched Kim Jonsson (the #1 defenseman for the Wild). May was suspended for the remainder of the series, while Jonsson got a concussion and was out for the remainder of the series. Again, that's quite the trade. A low-minutes goon for one of the best players on another team.

Where's the incentive against doing things like this?

Great article King.

FYI – I’m about to conduct a study correlating black players being suspended by white commissioners. It’s a topic which has gone unstudied for far too long. If anyone has any money they would like to grant me for this project, please go to my website, whitepeoplearebadpeople.com and make a donation. Thanks.

Ken Griffey Jr. is back.

I agree with everything King had to say, and I particularly appreciated his comment about Derek Fisher's sartorial display last week.

Steve Kerr, on his Yahoo! Sports blog, keeps bringing up the fact that Tim Duncan and Bruce Bowen left the bench early in the game on Monday to check in on a mild scrum. They didn't get involved, but neither did Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw. Hey, Mr. Stu Jackson, how is that consistent?

Given the reach of David Stern these days, I would expect King to get slapped with a mighty fine for suggesting (in a prior column) that the Suns (or any other team) show Mr. Bowen just how much his defensive efforts are appreciated.

Bottom-line: The NBA blew this call big time.

Someone previously wrote "It's a rule, they should no better".

When you jay-walk, you know better, but you don't expect to spend the night in jail either. If you even got a ticket for jay-walking, you'd probably complain all the way home (I would). Now image if the put the cuffs on...

This is the basketball equivalent of jay-walking. 2 people saw a teammate go down, took 5 steps towards him, and were ushered away. That's worthy of a suspension?

I'm a new bball fan attracted to Phoenix because of the fast paced, high-flying games. Instead, the NBA has basically said "NO, in order to defeat our thug image we must strictly enforce our rules."

Which is fine, until the thugs learn your rules and use them to their advantage, and then the thugs have the advantage again. That's what were talking about here. The spurs have been pushing the Suns and breaking the rules(without reprocussions) until the Suns finally broke the rules by WALKING(GASP!).

Tim Duncan and Bruce Bowen also left the bench area, but ESPN reported that Jackson responded "-- while conceding that Duncan 'should not have been on the playing court' -- said that the league determined there was 'no cause for the suspension rule' to be applied because the Elson-Jones tangle was not deemed to be an altercation." Introducing this line of logic, Stoudemire and Diaw should only be suspended if they were reacting to Bell's instigation of an altercation, rather than the initial hit on Nash, which was deducing from Jackson's response, not an altercation. Clearly, they rose out of their seats immmediately after Nash was decked and were already corraled by the time Bell altercated with Horry.

This is a comically inconsistant application of the rules. If I were a Sun's fan, I think I'd be pulling out my hair.

The fault isn't with the enforcement of the rule - as much handwringing was expended before the announcement, only an official like Stu Jackson could've stepped to the podium - but with something else you addressed. There is no excuse for not building some flexibility into the ruling months ago. After the Pistons/Pacers debacle, I can't fault Stern for getting nervous about players wandering freely, seeking whom they may devour, but it was either remarkably shortsighted or merciless of him not to predict this scenario and draft a rule accordingly. So the Suns are playing with one hand behind their back for a game. It's still a tied series. Suck it up, move Marion like a chess piece, and hope the league gets it right by next season, if not the next series.

And if that's not good enough, tell Barbosa to start walking under jump shooters.

Mikes Pace FYI – I’m about to conduct a study correlating black players being suspended by white commissioners.

I know you're kidding, but a study of the length and frequency of suspensions along racial/ethnic lines in the major sports -- well, not hockey -- would be pretty interesting.

When someone trots out that line, It's usually a sign that know common sense is about to take a beating. Like the school principal who suspends a kid for bringing cold medicine "drugs" to school, the NBA is sacrificing "spirit of the law" common sense for "letter of the law" literalness.

It's astounding that that the league office could actually say its not about fairness! WTF?!!! Fairness is THE fundamental aspect of sports. What makes this situation even more galling is that the Spurs Bowen was not suspended for his cheap shots against Amare or Nash and the Spurs got rewarded for Horry's thuggery. I can't believe that they are so shortsighted that they don't realize that this bogus decision opens the door for the escalating goonery they want to avoid and turns off the casual fan the game needs to draw.

Also, I love how the league talked out of both sides of its mouth. First they said there were no discretion in applying the rule in Amare/Diaw's case but then used discretion when they didn't suspend Duncan and Bowen for coming onto the court earlier in the game by saying the incident that brought them on court wasn't an "altercation" as defined by them. What utter nonsense.

Nice article.

It is beyond me why any sport would develop rules which punish the fans of the sport.

Doesn't make any sense.

Come up with a different way to punish these guys if you must. But let them do their job.