Remember basketball? It can be a beautiful game, especially as the Golden State Warriors play it. What happened in Memphis in the second game of the playoffs' second round was not basketball. It was the Memphis team (and their fans) going to war.
I don't for a minute buy the description of the attack on Gary Payton II that resulted in a serious injury that takes him out of the playoffs as "not intentional," or the elbow that bloodied Draymond Green and closed one eye for days as "inadvertent," any more than were the punches to Steph Curry. Hitting Payton in a defenseless moment, who just happened to be the primary defender on the Grizzlies' top scorer, ending his ability to play in the series, sure, that was an accident. As was the hit on Green, another defender of that top scorer and the field general for the offense, just a coincidence.
A one game suspension for one player is not enough. The only effective league deterrent is forfeit of a game. But even that isn't really enough, because Payton is out for the rest of this series--which happens to be his most important series because of his ability to guard Morant.
The league needs to settle this down now. The Commissioner or another official should attend the next game in a very visible way, to observe what's going on. The better referees should be reassigned to this series, not the crew that officiated in Memphis, especially in the first game, when (among other errors) they made way too much of Green's foul, and set up this escalating retribution.
Unfortunately not much can be done about the blood-thirsty Memphis crowd, except to silence them with resounding defeat.
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