A Preemptive Rant

The Suns' season was all but done midway through the fourth quarter in last night's thrilling Western Conference Semifinal game 4 when all of a sudden Timmy, Manu and the rest of the whiners started thinking about who they should knee in the nuts and kick in the achilles next round-Carlos Boozer, Deron Williams, or both (or perhaps have Jacque Vaughn give Andrei Kirilenko the shocker). Then something amazing happened: the Spurs, notorious for closing out games out home, completely folded under the pressure and are now heading back to the valley of the sun tied at 2 games a piece. And in the final moments the Spurs, knowing their fate was sealed handled the loss the way any classy championship veteran team would-by cross-checking the 2-time league MVP into the eighth row in the waining seconds. It was at this point that a minor melee ensued in which Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire took 3 steps onto the court from the bench to defend their teammate. And this finally brings me to my point: league rules currently stipulate that leaving the bench during a fight is an automatic one game suspension. Has there ever been a dumber rule in the history of organized sports? Should the outcome of an already great playoff series hinge on whether Diaw and Stoudemire took an extra step over an arbitrary line? Are the bigwigs in Seacaucus thick-headed enough to understand that they will be cheating the players and the fans out of what should be a spectacular game five in Phoenix? For the sake of the fans (a Detroit-San Antonio series has the appeal of watching a rectal exam in HD for three hours), and for the sake of the game, lets hope not.