Rules for their own sake

The back story is this: after heeding my advice (I only wish) and forgoing suspension of any Golden State Warriors for their behavior at the end of game four against Utah, the NBA has broken out the suspensions for the Suns/Spurs series. After knocking Steve Nash into the scorers' table and, apparently, fighting with Raja Bell, Robert Horry has been suspended for the next two games. And, in a horrible twist of justice, Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw of the Suns have each been suspended for game five because they left their bench in the ensuing moments.

It's probably the fighting that explains the suspensions, but part of me wants to believe that the NBA bigwigs haven't even been watching the Warriors/Jazz series because they're convinced the Suns or Spurs are going to represent the Western Conference in the finals. That would also suffice to explain the difference, I would think.

Stu Jackson, who metes out punishment for the league, says of the bench-leaving rule, "It's not a matter of fairness. It's a matter of correctness." Which shows where the league's priorities lie. I think it's time we examined these rules, and their enforcement, a bit more closely.

I've said it before, and I'll no doubt have to say it again. The reason to have rules in sports is to promote fairness. If enforcing a rule becomes anything other than a matter of fairness, then we have gone astray. Why does the bench-leaving rule exist to begin with? I'd say it's to prevent players from getting into fights. As such, if a player leaves the bench and enters an ongoing confrontation, he should be suspended. But that's not what happened Monday night. Rather, Stoudemire and Diaw were sent back to the bench by Suns assistant coaches before they got anywhere near the fray. Logically, this would imply that they had refrained from doing anything "bad", and should be safe from league persecution.

Unfortunately, the NBA has lost sight of what its rules are trying to prevent, in the interest of "correctness". The bench-leaving rule is about preventing fighting, not about preventing players from leaving the bench. There is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with a player stepping into the court when play is stopped.

The reason we in society put up with arbitrary regulations of this sort is that society has insufficient resources to review the facts of every case and make a fair and logical decision based upon them. But that's not the case in the NBA. Suspensions are never automatic. The league has to decide each one by reviewing the circumstances. So why do they need to enforce the correctness of their silly rules? Why not just make a fair decision?

I don't know. Maybe they want the Spurs to win.