Amare Stoudemire should be suspended

We’re going to discuss this Suns/Spurs business one more time, now that we’ve heard from the offending (and offended) parties.

This is a non-joke zone, because we actually have an opinion here, and it’s probably not the popular one, based on what we’ve read elsewhere. (Please read carefully before you yell at us.)

After watching all the stuff a bunch of times and reading the explanations from the league, the rebuttels from the press, the angst from the team owners/players, and the justified accusations of hyprocracy from the fans, our opinion is formed.

Here’s Suns owner Robert Sarver, who’s upset and such.

The league goofed Tuesday by suspending Amaré Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for tonight’s Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals. The league erred by relying on the language of the law instead of the spirit of it.

“I feel we’ve been unjustly penalized for the fact that we just played a good, clean hard game,” Suns owner Robert Sarver said. “I feel if any team should have been penalized in this series, it should be the Spurs, and I feel bad about it.

“I feel like I’ve just been punched in the gut.”

Okay, first of all, we completely agree with this – it sucks that the Spurs are essentially rewarded for their guy causing the whole thing.

THAT SAID (and this is a big THAT SAID), the reason we italicized the thingy up there in blue is because the spirit of the law was followed.

It doesn’t matter if Stoudemire and Diaw weren’t coming to fight or getting ready to throw punches. If any of you have ever been in a fight situation, then you know that having extra hands standing by to support you fires things up just a little more.

All of a sudden three guys “got your back” and you can get a little more shovey, a little more pushy, a little more mouthy, and you’re that much closer to a fight breaking out.

It escalates things, and that’s what the “spirit of the law” is for. It’s supposed to prevent the fight from happening in the first place, not punish people for getting in a fight. It worked – those guys scurried back to the bench, and it stopped things from escalating further and getting out of hand.

The NBA did the right thing in this situation – argue all you want about how it makes the series worse (and it does), it’s not fair to the Suns because they didn’t start it (and they didn’t), and that the rule needs to be revisited (it might), but there’s no doubt that Amare and Boris running out there (and Amare was running aggressively) was going to push things to another level.

(We still think the Suns can win tonight, btw. In fact, we think they will.)

UPDATE: Pounding the Rock, an excellent Spurs blog you may or may not peruse, is not happy with all of this either, as the labels of “thugs and villians” are not exactly pleasing. Their suggestion? San Antonio should sit Tim Duncan tonight, which we feel is something they’d maybe regret tomorrow. We like the spirit, though.