The NBA had one of its biggest players heading to one of its biggest stages yesterday before they pulled the plug on Kobe Bryant. Kobe, you see, picked up a suspension for elbowing Manu Ginobili or forearming him or something as he tried to knock down a game-winner on Sunday night at the Staples. Ginobili went down in a heap and though no call was made at the time the Spurs whined to the league office and Kobe got slapped on the wrist during the day on Tuesday.
It's not the first time that the Spurs have done that. Dial the wayback machine to last year's playoffs when Ron Artest elbowed Ginobili. It's clear what Artest's intent was there but not so clear why it warranted more than a personal foul. On Sunday night it's not at all clear, and not even something I would suggest, that Kobe meant to hit the Spur. Raised on soccer's facility with an exaggerated dive Ginobili went down like a ton of bricks but as one afternoon spent watching the World Cup will illustrate, that doesn't mean there's any actual injury. A renowned flopper, Ginobili - who appears to be violating the rule that you have to let a guy have space to land anyway - has cried wolf again and people listened.
Meanwhile high school's current version of Kobe Bryant, Huntington, WV's O.J. Mayo was facing a two game suspension of his own from an incident during a game last Friday. He was supposed to start serving the penalty yesterday and miss a game at Cameron Indoor in North Carolina against a school from California. He got an injunction, played, and his team won. Mayo got two technicals during the game and then appeared to bump the ref lightly when arguing the second call. The ref, taking a page from Ginobili's playbook, went down like he'd been shot by a sniper in a Karbala alley. I don't know enough about the rules and regulations of West Virginia high school sports but if one part of that suspension was for the thing with the ref it's a travesty. I'm fine with him getting penalized for the technicals but I played enough high school games to know refs tend to work games at the same school over and over and aren't above a little nudge here and there to help their employers out.
In both of these cases I find myself asking the same question: What exactly are we penalizing players for? Last night when Jared Jeffries blocked a three-pointer by Brian Cook, Cook's arm inadvertantly struck the Knick in the face and dislodged a contact lens. Should Cook be suspended? Of course not. Intent matters just as it mattered in the Mayo case when it's pretty clear that his intent was not to knock the referee to the ground. And just as it mattered when Kobe caught Ginobili and Ginobili faked injury.
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