It didn’t take long for David Stern to hand out his fines and suspensions for the brawl that took place on Sat night between the Nuggets and the Knicks. In case you missed it, 10 players were tossed from the game after a hard foul from the Nugget’s Mardy Collins on JR Smith sparked a crazy brawl. Here’s the video of it. You can see the Carmelo does the most damage during the fight.
Stern gave Melo a 15 game suspension for sucker punching Mardy Collins. Here’s the rest of the suspensions:
- Nate Robinson and J.R. Smith: 10 games
- Mardy Collins: 6 games
- Jared Jeffries: 4 games
- Jerome James and Nene: 1 game for leaving the bench
The Knicks and Nuggets organizations were both fined $500,000 each for putting a black eye on the NBA.
Meanwhile, Isiah Thomas is coming under heat because he appears to tell Carmelo Anthony prior to the flagrant foul by Collins, “Hey, don’t go to the basket right now. It wouldn’t be a good idea. Just letting you know.” They didn’t get Anthony but maybe that’s why he was so heated during the brawl. Zeke told him he was going to come after someone and the Knicks did. Anthony confired that’s what Isiah said to him and reported it to league officials. However, Stern said that he had no definitive information about what Isiah said when handing out punishments. Still, there’s no question that Isiah meant it as a threat. Isiah is a terrible coach and a punk. He always has been. In his playing days, he’d hide behing Bill Lambeer but now he gets to hide behind a suit.
Links:
[Yahoo]: Anthony suspended 15 games, no suspension for Thomas
2 replies on “NBA comes down hard on Melo for MSG brawl”
thomas and robinson complete hypocrites — It’s hilarious to me that Thomas and Robinson are mad about being “shown up”, when that’s EXACTLY what Robinson tried to do earlier in the season. Dan Wetzel of Yahoo calls them out:
We know a respectful sort such as Robinson would never, ever show up an opponent by, say, bounce-passing a ball off the backboard to himself so he could dunk it. And we know if, say, such a thing happened on his watch, say Nov. 29 in Cleveland, Thomas would never, ever leave Robinson in the game like it was completely acceptable.
Say Robinson:
“I won’t be trying it again unless we’re up by 20.”
Hmm… Nuggets were up by 20… by Robinson’s logic, shouldn’t they be allowed some show-boatin’ then?
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=dw-knicks121606&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
How is David Stern — not directly punishing Isiah is beyond me. I know the 500k fine towards the organizations was really directed at George Karl and Thomas but I think at least Zeke should be suspended a game or two for his warning to Melo.