So Joakim Noah had a meltdown last night in Sacramento after being ejected from the game between the Bulls and Kings. After the second technical foul was called Noah looked at each of the referees, pointed at them and dropped the f bomb on each of them. Clearly this was an overreaction on Noah's part, but at the same time it works right into the emotion that Noah plays with each and every night. Still, it was something that Noah should not have done. I knew he would be penalized for it. I was thinking anywhere from a $25,000 to $50,000 fine for it. Some people were even talking a suspension for him because of it. However, the great Adam Silver, the new commissioner of the NBA made a great move in fining him $15,000 for it. Now I'll explain why this was the perfect punishment for Noah.
First off we must go into what happened. Both Noah and Kings center, Demarcus Cousins were going for a rebound. Cousins grabbed Noah's arm as both were going for the rebound then fell down without anything forcing him to the ground. In other words, he completely flopped. This was far from the first flop that Cousins had done in the game. In fact, Cousins' flops were coming close to double digits by that point. Clearly this is something frustrating to everyone on the Bulls. Cousins had been just dropping to the floor wildly throughout the game, and the referees had been falling for it almost every time. After the play, Noah showed some frustration over the call and was hit with a very quick technical foul. After that is when Noah lost it. What I explained above is what followed.
Now, first to explain why Noah should have been fined. It's really pretty simple. You can't do that, plain and simple. You can't completely lose your cool like that. Maybe a little bit extra yelling, a naughty word here and there, sure, but singling out each official and telling them f you is something that just cannot be done by any player. It's something that happens more often than many fans really even think. If I hadn't sat front row at a game early last decade (early in the Cartwright era), I wouldn't have realized how bad the language the players use is, but I heard some officials take some pretty bad abuse without any penalty during that night. Still, it was so much more visible in the Noah incident that something had to be done.
Next up, why it was right for such a light penalty. First off, it looks like Adam "Hi Ho" Silver took some things into account. The call on Noah was a horrible call. Even a Kings fan would have to admit that, and that's coming from someone who still considers the Kings to be the real 2002 champions. It wasn't the first horrible call of that nature in the game either. Clearly he understood how upset the Bulls were with the officiating. Rather it was the reason the Bulls were down so far or not (it wasn't, the Bulls were just not playing well), he probably realized how frustrated the Bulls big men had gotten with the officials. Not only that, but when the quick technical foul call was made, Noah had every right to be furious. Not only had him and his teammates been screwed over by horrible calls throughout the night, but now he was getting punished on the spot for showing any displeasure towards those horrible calls.
It goes beyond even that. Before that call even happened there was a play when there was a foul call that Cousins was the beneficiary of. It happened right around the time his teammate took, and hit a shot. The referees had to review the play to see if the supposed call took place before or after the shot was taken so that they knew if they should count the shot or not. If the counted the shot, then it was one free throw for Cousins and the basket counted. If they had not counted the shot, then it was two free throws for Cousins. The end result was that it was two free throws for Cousins and no shot. However, that's not the point. The foul that was called was one of Cousins' blatant flops, and the referees, while reviewing the call, had to have seen that they blew the foul call, because they had to actually look for the foul and when it actually happened. I guess this still wasn't enough for them to know that it was a flop on Cousins' part, even though they clearly didn't actually see Noah commit an actual foul on the play that Noah was ejected after. You would think that after seeing that, the referees would be smart enough to not call a foul unless they saw an actual foul happen on the play. I mean, that makes sense, right? Well, I guess not to an NBA referee (there are plenty that are exempt from that, but none of them were a part of this crew).
So anyway, after all of that, a collection of the facts that you probably won't see anywhere else, it's pretty understandable that the officials were completely out of line in even making that call in the first place. When you really add all of it up, it was incredibly stupid of the referee to even consider, much less actually make that call.
I have a feeling that Silver took all of these things into account with that whole situation. I don't know for sure, as I'm not actually Adam Silver myself (although I do think he's infallible), but it makes sense that this was what he considered. Pretty much, you did something you cannot do under any circumstance, but I more than understand why you were so upset with the horrible officiating job that took place.
Now, to take a 90 degree turn here, a friend of mine brought up this in comparison to the Richard Sherman incident from a couple of weeks ago. He asked me why Sherman was a thug and Noah wasn't. Now, first off, I never called Sherman a thug, despite a complete disapproval to what he did after deflecting the pass that would have given the 49ers a late touchdown against the Seahawks and quite possibly send them into the Superbowl. I could care less about the interview after. Sure, Sherman showed a complete lack of class after picking on Crabtree after, I don't care what happened before that (we only know Sherman's side of that anyway), but my biggest beef with him was that instead of celebrating that play (which wasn't nearly as impressive as people try to say it was, it wasn't a play that you don't see half the corners in the league make at some point on a regular basis), he instead went at Crabtree and gave him the sarcastic "Good game." That also brings up the media lies that Sherman was actually being a good sport when it was clear to anyone who has heard it that people who said that didn't take into account that it's not what you say, but how you say it.
Anyway, the problem that I have with Sherman behaving in that way is that it shows that instead of being someone who like to take pleasure in the things that bring him his own joy, he instead takes more pleasure in the agony of other people. It's like the fan who can't celebrate his own favorite team's victory without trashing fans from another team. It's classless and a horrible display of sportsmanship, which is very important in society because it transcends sports and goes into other facets of life, rather it be the dating scene (I mean really, is it not enough that you got the girl, you have to rub it in the other guy's face?), business (there's too many places I could go with this), and just generally everywhere. It's like the one sister who brags about more people liking her dish than the other sister's during the family pot luck. That's what Sherman essentially did instead of celebrating with his own teammates.
The bigger part in that is that Sherman has shown a history of poor behavior like that. The most obvious case was after the Seahawks beat the Patriots during the 2012 season and he got into Tom Brady's face. I am admittedly not a Patriots fan, and haven't been a fan of Tom Brady for most of his career, but at the same time, he's in that level of royalty in the league where you just don't do that to him. Even if he wasn't, to go up to someone after a game and get in their face is a complete asshole move. To consider that doing that was a regular occasion for Sherman in 2012. In 2013 I didn't even pay enough attention to know, but either way, it's repeated asshole behavior on Sherman's part. Not only that, but he never made an apology for acting like an asshole, never, until a couple of DAYS after the Crabtree incident. Not right away after the game, like Noah did in a COMPLETELY different situation, but days later, and at first he made it seem like it was forced. I can't say for sure if he learned his lesson, but he did write an article fairly recently that was actually pretty well written. However, he kept admitting he did wrong to a minimum and cried racism much more. While I have no doubt that a lot of racism was involved in the outcry, which is very unfortunate, there were a lot of people like myself, people that hated Jeremy Shockey for doing lesser things, that didn't like it too. Sherman seems to still have no understanding of this. I don't care where he finished in his class in high school or where he went to college, he clearly still has a huge lack of knowledge on what he's doing wrong. That or he realizes that people will just use that to make excuses for him. The reality being that if you're a star athlete in high school and college you get much more give from teachers. I saw it myself in high school pretty much holding some guys hands through classes and seeing them get a better grade than me, the two of us even comparing test answers at times and seeing him get credit for the same answer that I was given no credit for. I don't take an athlete's grades seriously. I don't totally discount their intelligence, but saying that an athlete finished high school with good grades doesn't tell me that they're actually smart. Acting intelligent is what makes me thing that someone is smart. That's still not the issue though, the bottom line is that every last thing Sherman did in that situation was worse than what Noah did. To even compare the two of them, Noah with his isolated incident and Sherman with his pattern of horrible behavior, is completely foolish.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Adam Silver clearly took the right things into account with his punishment of Joakim Noah. He knew that he had to do something, as you can't just let that get by without giving him any punishment, but he seemed to really understand the frustration that had built up in Noah at that point. I wouldn't be surprised if we hear of some flopping fines coming down for Cousins in the near future, at any point from 5 minutes from now to in the next few days.
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