The State of the NBA

Given the recent brawl between the New York Knicks and the Denver Nuggets, my attention was turned to the current state of the NBA, and why I really do not follow this league or the NY Knicks anymore. This is in stark contrast to the past, in which I watched about ~95% of all the regular season and post-season games from the period of 1992-2000 (somewhere around 1000 games). This was the heyday of both the NY Knicks and the NBA as a whole, and I was lucky during that time to live in an area where we received every Knicks game on the Madison Square Garden (MSG) Network. I loved everything NYC during that time, including the Jets and Yankees, although I didn’t follow them as closely as the Knicks, as basketball to me was much more exciting than any other sport (I followed football a lot, but largely watched the Buffalo Bills at that time, whom I now represent over the Jets!). Besides the Knicks, the rest of the NBA was also exciting given the caliber of players that were in the game at that time (more on that later).

Although I didn’t watch this game live either, for those who missed it, here is a video of the Knicks-Nuggets brawl on December 16, 2006:

I was lucky to catch the video the morning after it happened on YouTube.com, but within ~24 hours, almost all of the video capturing the brawl was taken down from the website, with a disclaimer at the top of the page stating that the video was copyright by the NBA. Therefore, I apologize if the video is broken, but you can blame the NBA for that. I don’t see any other NBA footage being removed from the website, so one can only assume that the league singled out this “brawl” for removal rather than all of the highlights of their players performing spectacular moves, which remain on YouTube.com.

The NBA (Commissioner David Stern in particular) has obviously wanted to clean up its league’s image for quite some time now. This campaign largely started in response to the other infamous ”brawl” in recent years, the Detroit Pistons-Indianapolis Pacers brawl in November 2004. This brawl, initially involving Ron Artest and Ben Wallace, turned ugly quickly when the fans became involved in the fight:

Both the Knicks-Nuggets and Pistons-Pacers fights were similar in that both occurred towards the end of the game, starting with a flagrant foul upon the team that led by a wide margin (thereby obviously about to win).

Despite these numerous fights, I do not feel that it has much to do with the downfall of the NBA. Fights within professional basketball have been going on for a long time, and some of the legends have been involved in them as well (Dr. J vs. Larry Bird comes to mind).

The 2 biggest fights I had ever witnessed in professional basketball up until the Pistons-Pacers brawl both involved the NY Knicks. The first occurred in March 1993, and involved the NY Knicks and the Phoenix Suns. I remember that the game had been boring up to that point so I went up to take a shower and get ready for bed. Coming out of the shower, I went downstairs to see what the score was, but didn’t have my glasses or contacts on, so I couldn’t see much. Within a minute, a fight broke out between Doc Rivers (NY) and Kevin Johnson (Phoenix), and I had to sit within a foot of the screen to watch what transpired. The whole Knicks bench was cleared, and the result included Greg Anthony, who was injured and in street clothes at the time, going after K.J. and punching him in the face. It was the biggest brawl in the NBA up until that point, with tons of fines and suspensions.

The 2^nd biggest fight I had ever seen was the infamous NY Knicks-Miami Heat brawl in the 1997 playoffs. This fight got started when The Heat’s P.J. Brown BODYSLAMMED Knicks point guard Charlie Ward. That one act had the entire Knicks’ bench cleared in seconds, and everybody got into it, including Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, Allan Houston, and John Starks. The Knicks-Heat rivalry was pretty thick around that time in the NBA, after Pat Riley left coaching the Knicks to go to Miami, with some possibly shady deals occurring under the table to get Riley to leave NY.

Other notable NY Knicks fights I can remember occurred in the following season playoffs, continuing the previous brawl between the Knicks and Heat. I remember thinking that that fight was unusual because it involved former teammates Larry Johnson and Alonzo Mourning (both had previously played for the Charlotte Hornets). The bench-clearing occurred again but this time it ended with Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy down on the court hanging on for dear life on Alonzo Mourning’s leg. He was pretty lucky he didn’t get trampled to death!

The Knicks-Pacers rivalry in the mid-90’s also produced some heated exchanges, many between John Starks and Reggie Miller (I HATED Reggie Miller!!), including the infamous fight that occurred when John Starks heat-butted Reggie Miller.

However, these fights are only a part of the problem the NBA faces these days, and as you can see, some pretty big fights occurred in the 90’s, when the NBA was in its prime. The issue nowadays is that there are no team dynasties and exciting players to follow anymore. There are a few great players, such as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, but not one of them are as exciting as the NBA stars of the past, like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Patrick Ewing.

And then we come to Michael Jordan. I never really appreciated him when he played, because he and the rest of the Chicago Bulls always thwarted the Knicks’ championship dreams in the early-to-mid 90’s. I HATED Michael Jordan with a passion back then, and so did most Knicks’ fans. But the Knicks-Bulls games always made for exciting basketball. Looking back, there is no doubt that MJ was the greatest player to ever play the game, and I’m not sure the NBA will ever return to those days, for 1 main reason: There were many exceptional players on many teams when MJ was playing, and this brought out the best in him. I honestly don’t think that MJ would be as amazing if he had played today, because the caliber of players overall is just not as good in the NBA.

I miss the NBA :( To me, it will never be the same. That’s why I pretty much stopped following the Knicks after Ewing left. They don’t have any franchise players in the league anymore, as free agency has also hurt the NBA (the only great players that have stayed with their original teams for a prolonged period of time is Kevin Garnett on the T-Wolves and Allen Iverson on the 76's-who at the time of this writing was just traded to the Denver Nuggets several days ago).

As a last plug against Michael Jordan and the Bulls, I will leave you with one of the greatest plays I had ever witnessed in all of my days watching the Knicks, by my favorite player of all time John Starks, THE DUNK: