The Celtics’ Joe Mazzulla isn’t your average NBA head coach. He’s meticulous and has a mind for basketball that rivals all-time great players and coaches. He’s also slightly eccentric. Video of him giving jaw-dropping answers to seemingly straightforward questions from reporters often go viral on social media. He did it again earlier this week by telling CBS Sports Boston that he wished the NBA would allow players to fight more.
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He was asked during an interview about one thing he’d change about the league. He responded,
“I wish we’d bring back like fighting. You want to talk about robbing the league of entertainment, shat’s more entertaining than a little scuffle? How come in baseball they’re allowed to clear the benches? How come in hockey they’re allowed to fight? I don’t understand.”
A take as hot as that instantly became a talking point among fans on social media and sports media’s biggest talking head Stephen A. Smith had no choice but to address it. On First Take, the analyst relayed Mazzulla’s thoughts and claimed that the NBA is too soft. However, he added that it’s not necessarily a bad thing, Smith said,
“I would say this, not the players, the way the game is called. The slightest thing, even catch you jawing at one another, you can get T’d up for crying out loud… guys are hyper, motivated.. you’re going at one another, you’re going all out, and if that means getting in each other’s faces and jawing at one another without the fisticuffs, I don’t have a problem with that.”
He claimed that the infamous full-blown carnage in the dying moments of the game between the Pacers and Pistons at Auburn Hills in 2004, dubbed ‘The Malice at the Palace,’ was a turning point in the league’s mentality towards fights between players. Smith explained,
“After the Malice at the Place, you just can’t find yourself in a situation where you’re okay, you can’t find yourself as a league condoning that by any stretch of the imagination… But I do think that they need to stop calling the game so softly, where the guys, talking smack to one another warrants ejections, technicals, and all of this. I don’t think that’s right, as long as it doesn’t regress to fisticuffs.”
15 years ago today, the Pacers and Pistons engaged in what was later named the “Malice at the Palace.” pic.twitter.com/tDYPtTUUss
— The Sporting News (@sportingnews) November 19, 2019
As the analyst explained, the incident prompted the league to stomp out excessive physicality and penalize any gesture or comment that could be construed as an attempt to incite an opponent. However, older fans and players believe that the NBA’s clamping down on those aspects has made the league ‘softer’ as players began misusing stricter officiating and drawing cheap fouls with flops.
Here’s the referee’s explanation for giving @jj_redick a 2nd techincal: “The second technical was for throwing the ball in the direction of an official with force.”
Refs have to be better this season. Especially if you think the way JJ threw the ball was “with force.” pic.twitter.com/mvQYVetmTi
— Farbod Esnaashari (@Farbod_E) February 22, 2021
It has also led to frustrating technical fouls for innocuous actions like throwing the ball back to a referee. Perhaps a little leeway and a bit of physicality would make the games more interesting. Allowing players to get in their opponents’ faces and throw hands if needed would make for an entertaining product. However, that seems rather unnecessary.
The NBA doesn’t need fighting
The NBA, first and foremost, is a business. Allowing players to fight without dire consequences would add an air of unpredictability but would harm the product in the long run. Then there’s the little issue of health. When a player gets injured while playing basketball, a team manages his recovery. After all, he was injured in the process of carrying out the terms of his contract.
However, if a player is injured while fighting someone on the court, would a team foot that bill? Perhaps they would add a clause in a player’s contract that they wouldn’t pay for any medical expenses that directly stem from a star’s inability to resist the urge to fight and then hold their own in that scuffle.
The quick whistles for taunting and trash-talking may be infuriating, but they’re necessary. Players have big egos, and a big ego mixed with adrenaline is a bad cocktail. A ‘punch first, think about the repercussions later’ attitude would hurt careers.
Mazzulla, for all his lovable eccentricities, may have missed the mark with this one. Fighting, even in minimal amounts, is in no way for the betterment of the league.
