The Knicks-Nuggets fight in 2006 was the NBA’s last brawl

Dec. 16, 2006 might have been the NBA’s final brawl.

Two years after the NBA’s most infamous night in Auburn Hills, players from the Knicks and Nuggets tested the league again with a sprawling throwdown sparked by a violation of unwritten rules, spilling into the crowd, and ending with a foolish blow from young superstar Carmelo Anthony.

The league came down with a sledgehammer, as if to obliterate even the possibility of such behavior in the future. And indeed, there hasn’t been a fight anywhere near that size in the decade since. You can still see ripples from David Stern’s decision to make an example of the players who brawled.

Like The Malice at the Palace, the Knicks-Nuggets brawl erupted from a hard foul in the final seconds of a blowout loss for the home team. Isiah Thomas’ Knicks bristled at George Karl leaving his best players on the floor with a decisive win already in hand — one of those perfectly legal tactics some take as an affront. Thomas takes basically everything as an affront, so it wasn’t going to end well.

Karl had his garbage time subs at the scorer’s table, but before they could check in, the Knicks committed a turnover, and Mardy Collins stifled a J.R. Smith fast break with what all evidence suggests was a premeditated flagrant foul. Nate Robinson was one of the first to the scene, and he readily admitted this was the case. Via ESPN:

“For what they did as in keeping guys in, I knew a foul was going to come,” Robinson was quoted as saying after the game. “A hard one because we’re not going to let guys keep dunking when they’re up 20 and they have their starters in.”

Collins committed the foul, Smith reacted, Robinson reacted to the reaction, and it built from there.

It was a perfect storm. Had Isiah not been a petty, baseball-esque stickler for unwritten rules, the fight might never have started. Had the irascible Smith and Robinson not been two of the first people involved, it might not have inflamed further. And had Karl not broken Thomas’ unwritten rule by leaving his guys out there to run up the score, Carmelo Anthony might not have had an opportunity to sidetrack his burgeoning superstardom with a tiger claw to Mardy Collins’ face.

Refs couldn’t contain the mayhem. It’s almost tragic watching poor Dick Bavetta bear hug the least aggravated guy in the scrum.

So, two years after its biggest headache in Auburn Hills, Mich., the league faced another big headache. The MSG brawl didn’t feature players punching fans, but it had players punching among fans in the stands. And it had Melo — the NBA’s leading scorer at the time and viable candidate for Face of the League — reigniting a dead fight by pawing a dude in the face and running.

In response, David Stern dropped a heavy stack of suspensions along with $500,000 fines for each franchise. Smith and Robinson each got 10 games for punching each other, while Collins and New York’s Jared Jeffries got six and four-game suspensions, respectively. Anthony’s suspension was the most punitive: 15 games (during which Denver acquired Allen Iverson!) for that final smack. Fifteen games equals the punishment meted out to Jermaine O’Neal (after an appeal) for assaulting a fan on the court in Detroit.

Suspensions that severe constituted sanction not just on the fighters, but on the very idea of fighting. It was prophylaxis as much as penalty; an effort to deter future brawls by over-punishing this one. Stern didn’t try to hide that:

“It is our obligation to take the strongest possible steps to avoid such failures in the future and to make a statement to all who follow the game of basketball that we understand our obligations and take them seriously. Accordingly, I am issuing the penalties listed below, and will take the occasion to set forth some of the considerations that have influenced my decision here and will continue to guide us as we seek to demonstrate our determination that the NBA and its players be viewed as standing for the best in sports.

Memories of The Palace brawl definitely cast a shadow over that decision, but when the man behind the dress code insisted players “stand for the best in sports,” there was something grander going on. Every other professional sport hosted violence sometimes, but none of them regarded any fight as a blight on the entire league, beyond just the individuals involved. Only the NBA — with predominantly black players presented just 10 at a time, right at the live audience’s feet, unobscured by helmets or pads or fiberglass barriers — would express such high-level self-consciousness.

At the time, Dave Zirin pointed out columnists looking far beyond the two coaches — one who ran up the score, the other who retaliated — for blame, and for responsibility to change:

On these two men the blame should fall, and in any other sport, that is exactly what would occur. But not when it involves the NBA.

Instead, we are deluged with articles about how, as a Yahoo Sports headline described it, this is really “a black eye” for the entire league. The Baltimore Sun’s Childs Walker wrote that the brawl should spark a discussion “about the sociology of the NBA.” MSNBC’s Michael Ventre opined that “the terms ‘NBA’ and ‘thuggery’ have become inextricably linked in the minds of basketball fans the world over.” The piece also calls the incident another example of “The NBA Vs. Idiots.”

Young black men scuffling, even scuffling in a way that would make foxy boxing seem threatening, seem to be a catalyst for an astounding amount of public hand-wringing.

Former NBAer Steve Kerr, while chastising Melo in isolation, imagined the fight in a hockey context and reasonably assumed it wouldn’t have made waves:

The league’s image is paramount, and it took such a beating after the brawl at The Palace that Stern will do everything necessary to halt fighting. (Never mind that nobody seems to be concerned about hockey’s image, where a fight like the Anthony/Collins one occurs nightly and is cheered — but that’s a different story.)

Right? Hockey players tussling is hockey. Basketball players doing the same is cause for the referees union asking Martin Luther King III to moderate a conflict resolution summit. The structure of the sport and its arenas must play a part in that distinction, but when the word “thuggery” is getting thrown around, so too must race.

Ten years later, Zirin and Kerr’s suspicions have been realized. The NHL and MLB both still stomach massive fights without league-wide reckonings, while the NBA’s image-conscious crackdown really has set it apart from the rest of pro sports.

What’s the most vicious basketball fight since 2006? Metta World Peace got a seven-game ban for one elbow, the biggest suspension this decade for an on-court incident. There’s the occasional punch or headbutt or throat grab, but it never escalates from there. Dudes mostly fight by mushing their foreheads together and exchanging a shove or two.

And in this least violent era, the NBA’s reputation is soaring. Soft, some say, but the game looks clean, the stars are glowing, and the profits are hiiiiigh.

Maybe that’s just good fortune, or maybe the NBA’s self-conscious message to its players still resonates 10 years later. This league doesn’t expect the slack other pro leagues get when competitors turns violent. Its players make a solitary “statement” and stand subject to unique “obligations,” to use David Stern’s words.

Pro basketball players are compelled to be twice as good as their counterparts, for they represent an image, not just themselves. We may never see an NBA brawl again.