Suspensions from "The Brawl" Handed Down

Only added for completeness.. "The long national nightmare is over."

I Enjoy a Good Politically Incorrect Slugfest

Larry Burnett, the announcer of the Los Angeles Sparks, has his own take on "The Brawl":

I’ll be honest with you. I do not mind a good fight every once in awhile. I know! The politically correct thing to say is that “there is no place in sports for this kind of activity”. Truth is, the Sparks have been playing soft and getting pushed around for weeks. They were struggling with team chemistry on the court and had not exhibited anything remotely resembling a killer instinct. Tuesday night for a few wild seconds, they pulled together, closed ranks and stood up for each other. You find out who your real friends are when a fight breaks out. There will definitely be suspensions that will hurt the Sparks, but circle July 21st on your 2008 calendar. That just might be the date that the L.A. Sparks became a true team again and serious championship contenders.

Don't let Coach Meadors find that out. She'll be scheduling fights once a week if she thinks it helps the Dream. "So, Alison, how well can you take a punch?"

Ten Thoughts About "The Brawl"

1. I only caught part of "The Brawl" in real time. Around 10 pm or so, I flipped over to ESPN2 (I would have watched the game, but I like spending time with my non-WNBA watching wife). I fully expected the final part of the game to leak over the 10 pm mark -- trust me, I've been reading about the fury of MLS fans who have parts of their games preempted.

So all I see are a bunch of players standing around and Bill Laimbeer saying, "(Microphone cut for swearing) She won't be back in the league next year." My wife turned to me and said "what did he just say?" I thought he was talking about a player.

Then my wife asked me to change the channel.

2. It just goes to show you that keeping a daily blog fresh is hard. I wake up and there are like 14,000 comments about the brawl. The big WNBA blogs have already reported on it.

3. Everyone has an opinion about it. My opinion is limited to a six-minute YouTube clip I saw before I went to work. The impression it left me with is that Plenette Pierson and either Candace Parker or Lisa Leslie had some words during a rebound. Later, after a free throw, Pierson and Parker exchanged some words, and the brawl was on.

4. I think the footage is going to be watched by WNBA fans more than the Zapruder film, with magnifying glasses to examine it frame by frame. And of course, after everyone can see the objective truth, there will be 10,000 opinions as to what actually happened.

5. It's a fucking shame that Cheryl Ford got hurt. That sucked, and I'm no more of a fan of the Shock than any other roots-for-another-team blogger.

6. Right now, it looks as if the fans are trying to determine if the fight is a positive (brings more attention, negates opinion that WNBA is "soft") or a negative (negative publicity, Ford hurt, major starts suspended). At least Q at Rethinking Basketball is trying to analyse things from the hard facts of history rather than just opinion. (His conclusions are that the fight hurts the WNBA more than it helps it.)

7. Yes, I agree that President Donna Orender has a big problem on her hands. Who gets suspended, and for how long? A five-game suspension means a lot more in the WNBA than it does in the NBA. I'm looking for the referee blog at WNBA.com, which has strangely disappeared....

8. I think that every other post on Rebkell is about "The Brawl".

9. I'm going to be very bold and say: "I just don't have an opinion." Not yet, anyway. This is actually a Federal crime in sports blogging, where writers are expected to have an opinion about everything, at all times, with a minimum of 1000 words posted per opinion. I expect FBI agents to raid my cubicle at any time right now.

10. I suspect that in any future non-WNBA film clip talking about Bill Laimbeer and the "intensity" he brings as a coach, they're going to be showing this clip. He's probably dreading the questions they'll be asking him thirty years from now.