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NBA Insider: Mike Monroe
Express-News Staff Writer
Web Posted: 11/10/2006 06:14 PM CST
I think I've got this Zero Tolerance thing figured out: It's all part of David Stern's favorite project, "NBA Cares."
See, all the fine money collected each year from players, coaches and, yes, owners, winds up being distributed to various charities, favorite NBA causes, such as Habitat for Humanity, which the league helped when it was rebuilding homes lost to Hurricane Katrina.
Last season, players received 785 technicals for unsportsmanlike conduct, which is how the league defines techs for bad behavior like swearing or flailing the arms or, in some cases, giving a referee a dirty look. (Don't laugh. It has happened). Technicals for hanging on the rim or delay of game – technical technicals, if you will – aren't fined.
The league upped the fine schedule last season, too, going to an escalating system. The first five technicals cost players $1,000 apiece. Technicals 6-10 cost $1,500 apiece; technicals 11-15 take $2,000 each out of the paycheck.
Fifteen technicals costs a player $22,500.
Then it gets really ugly. A 16th technical results in a one-game suspension. That costs a player 1/90th of his salary.
Detroit's Rasheed Wallace was the only player who broke the 16-technical limit last season. Since his salary last season was $10,850,000, that 16th technical cost him $120,555.
Well, as of the end of Thursday's play, a total of 71 games, players had been whacked 68 times for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Through 70 games last season, only 24 unsportsmanlike technicals had been assessed.
That's 2.7 times more technicals.
If you extrapolate on last season's total of 785 technicals, multiplying that number by 2.7, you come up with 2,119.5 technicals. We'll give the referees the benefit of the doubt when it comes to tolerance and drop that final half-tech. In fact, we're willing to suggest the referees and players are going to learn to get along better as the season progresses and adjust that multiplier all the way down to 2.0 and project there will be 1,570 technicals this season.
Now, if you multiply that by $1,000 per violation, you come up with $1,570,000 for David "Alpha Male" Stern (thanks to SI's Jack McCallum for that one) and his "NBA Cares" charities.
I'm sure Wallace feels better knowing he is the league's primary benefactor of good causes.
After Wallace's latest run-in with refs, during the Pistons' loss at Utah on Monday, he already has four technicals this season. If he were to get four techs a month – and he still has more than two weeks to go in November to get more – he would reach 16 with two months left in the season. No surprise, then, that Wallace is one of the players calling on the players' union to do something about the hardly-any-tolerance rule.
"It's crazy, man," Wallace told the Detroit News. "Us, as players, need to go in and get our union together and we've got to fight that law."
Good luck to Billy Hunter and the union in fighting the league's crackdown on bad behavior, though. Stern has clearly established his right to establish standards of conduct, mostly by collectively bargaining them with Hunter himself.
"I think what may ultimately happen if it continues to occur is we will probably be compelled to bring an unfair labor practice action or something," Hunter recnetly told The Associated Press. "Try to seek some relief, at least to have the issue either heard or at least elevated so that it gets a lot more public attention than it's currently getting."
In the meantime, I believe Alpha Male's policy has charitable roots, as in "give ‘til it hurts."
What We Hear
That new Sonics owner Clay Bennett (and his ownership pals from Oklahoma) was relieved that Proposition I-91 (it prohibits pro sports teams from getting a public subsidy unless they return a profit to the public that is the same as what a bond returns, currently 4.75 percent currently) passed on Tuesday. Now he can focus on building a new arena in Bellvue, where the bulk of his season ticket holders live anyway, without offending city of Seattle.
That Jason Kidd has come up with a tangible reason for disliking the new ball that goes way beyond how it bounces or get slippery when wet: That he is developing cuts, similar to paper cuts, on his fingertips. Sheesh. We knew the ball was made of a composite material. We didn't know Spalding had shards of glass in the mix.
That we have the season's first quarterback controversy, and it's in Orlando. Jameer Nelson has played like garbage to start the season, turning it over 22 times in five games. Meanwhile, Carlos Arroyo has been fantastic. He hit all nine of his shots against Atlanta, and scored 12 of his 23 points in the fourth quarter on Monday against Washington to save the Magicians. Predictably, Brian Hill swears there is no controversy, says the Magic will "stay the way we are and see what happens."
The problem, in a nutshell: Grant Hill's healthy and needs shots, Dwight Howard is better and needs a few and Hedo Turkoglu has never been anything but a gunner, so Nelson – a shoot-first point – is trying to be something he's not – a distributor.
That Chris Webber's patience, admirable thus far this season, may be getting thin. If Mo Cheeks asks him often enough to sit big stretches of crunch time – C.Webb did not play in the fourth quarter at Miami and sat out the final 19:39 in the Sixers' first loss of the season on Tuesday, at Indiana – expect Webber to voice his displeasure.
That Ryan Hollins, 7-footer from UCLA who has been on Bobcats' inactive list thus far, even with Primoz Brezec out, will be headed soon to the Ft. Worth NBDL team, coached by Sidney Moncrief, to get some playing time. Bobcats like his athleticism and potential, but Hollins needs to get NBA-ready
