Bernucca Column: Punking vs. Punching

By Chris Bernucca

“There’s a lot of woofing going on in the league. Guys do a lot of talking. What I would like to see, since television seems to be promoting everything, is an off-season boxing tournament for NBA players. Let them put on 16-ounce gloves and fight three two-minute rounds. One thing it would do … it would stop a lot of the woofing going on.” – “Pistol” Pete Maravich, in a 1977 Sports Illustrated article

My son plays AAU basketball. He’s not oversized or overly skilled. He’s not very quick and he doesn’t jump out of the gym. His best attributes are a consistent outside stroke and an Antawn Jamison-like ability for getting the ball from the catch to the shot quickly enough to catch defenders off guard.

Oh, yeah, and he doesn’t take crap from anybody.

Last spring, his practices were at a huge gym with five fullcourts that his program shared with other AAU programs. From time to time, teams from his program would scrimmage teams from other programs.

One night, his eighth grade team was matched up against a squad of ninth- and eighth-graders. He drew a kid a little bit bigger than him who immediately tried to establish his size advantage by backing him down in the low post and banging against him while calling for the ball. When my son shoved back, the kid shouted, “Get off me!”

Play went to the other end of the court, and they continued jostling. There was a break in the action as the ball went out of bounds. At that point, my son got close enough to his man and said something just loud enough for him to hear.

“You know, this isn’t a game with referees or fouls or anything,” he said, looking the kid in the eye. “This is just a scrimmage. I’ll punch you in the face right now.”

Play continued for a couple more possessions, and the opposing coach subbed in a couple of fresh players. The kid matched up against my son wasn’t supposed to come out of the game but asked out anyway. And when he came back in, he made sure he didn’t match up with my son.

Would my son really have punched this kid in the face had the rough stuff continued? Who knows? I’d like to think he wouldn’t, because that’s not how he has been raised. Then again, I’ve seen him clearly target opponents whose play has crossed the line with a shove or an elbow. Because, of course, he doesn’t take crap from anybody.

The greater point is that the bigger kid backed down. He came into the game acting like a bully and was put in his place with a verbal threat that was delivered as well as any haymaker from Mike Tyson.

Bottom line? The kid was a punk, and basketball – even the NBA – is full of them.

When Kevin Durant said last season that “there’s a lot of fake tough guys in this league,” he was telling the truth. We see it all the time. Guys get into it and start jawing at each other, teammates and referees  step in, the empty barrels finally stop making noises and play resumes.

Take a look at this one, where Kobe Bryant and George Hill clearly don’t want to fight but feel obligated to preserve their manhood with in-your-face trash-talking and threatening hand gestures.

Or this one, where LeBron James and Ron Artest both seem to simultaneously decide they aren’t as tough as they thought they were.

Or this catfight between Carlos Arroyo and J.J. Barea in an international game. I saw better girl fights in high school.

Sometimes, there are more punks than peacemakers and you get a mess like this one in which no less than six players – Quentin Richardson, Kevin Garnett, Udonis Haslem, Kendrick Perkins, Jermaine O’Neal and Glen Davis – all want no part of being the toughest guy in the room but have no problem with throwing some sort of sneaky cheap shot.

And there’s always the obligatory excuses from the announcers about cooler heads prevailing or how their alleycat isn’t going to take any guff from the other team’s prima donna and yada yada yada.

Please. These guys don’t throw punches because there are only two possible consequences: (a) a big fine and suspension and (b) everyone who follows the NBA finding out that they’re really not a tough guy.

Check out the aforementioned “Big Baby” in this video. There is no question about the intent of Kurt Thomas; he decided that he is going to foul Davis as hard as he can and ends up throwing him to the floor. Davis didn’t like being treated like a rag doll and bounces up to … what? Try to even the score with a chest bump?

Both possible consequences may have flashed through Davis’ mind. He may have thought better of an equal retaliation – a tackle, a forearm, something – that would have landed him on a repeated slo-mo loop on Stu Jackson’s laptop. But he also may have thought better of escalating an incident with someone who just threw his 270-pound manhood on the floor.

Just once, we would like to see a player respond to a cheap shot with an expensive one.

Just once, we would like to see a player back up his instigation with some real action.

Just once, we would like to see a player show exactly why no one messes with the schoolyard bully.

We are not advocating anarchy here. We are not longing for the days of Willis Reed terrorizing the entire Lakers team or the horrifying punch thrown by Kermit Washington. The last thing we want to see is the NBA go all MMA.

Fighting is an unfortunate byproduct of supersized men in underwear pushing and banging against each other in a battle for an extra foot of space on a court whose dimensions are dangerously close to obsolete. But the players are only getting bigger. And the owners aren’t going to give away two rows of expensive seats to widen the court to a more manageable 60 feet. So fights are gonna happen.

Which brings us back to our original point. Just once, we would like to see a player just dismiss the consequences and elevate the altercation from punking to punching, ignore the ensuing tweets and talking heads, and serve his suspension with a satisfied smile.

Because we believe that when he returns, he will never be messed with again. Ever.

Those “fake tough guys” Durant was talking about? He won’t be one of them. In fact, he would be the exact opposite, a “real tough guy” willing to throw a punch at the first sign or sound of trouble.

All those “fake tough guys” who try to get away with a sneaky elbow or shove? You can bet they will think twice about that when dealing with our player, whose response might be a right cross. Want to escalate the banging to threatening trash talk? Not with our guy, unless you want to end up cold-cocked on YouTube for all eternity.

Yes, there would be a price to pay. While the above actions by Chris Childs, Tracy McGrady and Shaquille O’Neal resulted in a grand total of seven suspended games, they all occurred about 10 years ago, well before the Malice at the Palace in 2004 dramatically impacted how the league legislates violence. By comparison, Andrew Bynum’s flying hipcheck on Barea in last season’s playoffs – no posturing, no punches, just your standard sore-loser cheapshot – drew a five-game ban.

What’s a fair punishment for responding to an F-bomb with a fist bomb? Ten games? Twenty? Carmelo Anthony got 15 games for his sucker punch of a relatively defenseless Mardy Collins. You can say whatever you want about the merits of that penalty, but it amounts to less than 20 percent of one season of a career that likely will last more than 15 seasons.

Just once. After all the judicial and journalistic dust has settled, our player might find that it was worth one month’s pay to show a league full of “fake tough guys” what a “real tough guy” looks like.

A guy who doesn’t take crap from anybody.

Chris Bernucca is a regular contributor to SheridanHoops.com. His columns will appear every Thursday.