Not Exactly the Palace

So in watching, and rewatching, the fight shown above, there are a couple of things that startle me:

• The fact that it's still being referred to as a "fight". This was a shoving match at best.
• Carmelo Anthony recieved a 15 game suspension for his "involvement"-he threw one of the top-3 weakest punches ever thrown by a professional athlete, and then ran away from Jared Jeffries. The NBA should make him play every night to endure the jeers from the fans. For those of you unfamiliar with Jeffries, he's built like me, weighs about what I do, and is over a foot taller than me. What I'm trying to say is, 'Melo maybe should've stood there and waited, because he would've had little problem with ol' Double J.
• Nate Robinson is insane. He's 5'7". He blocked a Yao Ming jumper a month ago. He tried the same terrible, school-yard dunk 33 times in a row last year in the Dunk Contest, finally connecting long after anyone stopped paying attention. When JR Smith ran over and tackled him, he completely disappeared. Just strange.

What makes the whole thing most unsettling for me is that all of this came out of frustration and embarrassment because George Karl was still playing his starters with a 20 point lead and under a minute to play. Are these people serious? You're worried about being one-upped? Where does it say that a coach has to pull his starters at the end of the game? If you don't want to be embarrassed, don't lose by 20. Act like a real NBA team.

All of these unwritten rules and ballplayer codes are starting to make me sick. As a coach, Karl has the right to play anyone on his roster at any given time.