There are still 4 minutes until the end of the game. Gobert mentioned the top of the arc for cover, then immediately turned around and cut to the basket. Conley's high hanging ball bypassed the defender and passed to his hand. But Miles Turner returned very quickly, jumping up and slapping Gobert's left hand into the basket, along with Gobert himself.
Before Gobert fell to the ground, Shunshi pulled Turner's ball pants and pulled him down. Turner, of course, couldn't stand this grievance, and after the two sides got up, he crashed directly into Gobert, and Gobert returned to hug him with a bear. The two held each other in several circles, and were pulled away by the referee and security guards. When the referee expelled the two of them, Ingles and Mitchell, who were also expelled, were involved in the conflict.
Mitchell, who scored 26 points in the game, blamed the referees for the clash after the game: "I think it could all be avoided – as long as the referees work early, rather than watching the smell of gunpowder grow stronger over the course of the game." ”
As Mitchell said, behind the frequent clashes this season is the referee's indulgence of physical confrontation. In the past few years, there have been fewer court conflicts in general, especially in the regular season, when the game has been too harmonious. Everyone is happy to play, happy and happy to finish work, you score three points, I also have a flying buckle, the game wins or loses is not important, the important thing is that everyone can brush the data. But less than a month into the start of the new season, there have been two clashes on the pitch, far more frequently than ever before. In principle, physical contact is not encouraged in basketball, but when the referee specifically enforces the law, of course, it will also allow a certain intensity of confrontation. This allowable scale was just drastically revised this summer. The referees said they wanted to allow the players to do some defensive maneuvers and to make the game smoother.
After the summer league revised the blow-off scale, this season's NBA games have really become smoother, so smooth that sometimes you forget that there are still referees on the court. When Gobert dragged Turner down, Ed Malloy, a veteran referee who had enforced the NBA for 20 years, stood by their side. But he glanced at the two men, completely oblivious to Turner, who was about to foul him, and simply turned his head and ran to the front court, leaving them with a shadow on their backs. In order to get justice for himself, Turner had to use his own methods, and he did not regret it: "I don't think I did anything wrong. I felt that in that situation, I couldn't bear to swallow. ”
Soon, this conflict became the focus of yesterday's competition: the game was every day, and the conflict was another matter. Sports is a peacetime war, and there are many spectators who are good at this mouthful. Buy a ticket and watch two big fights, which is also a visual feast that many fans want to enjoy. New York fans in the 90s were willing to buy the most expensive tickets in the league to watch madison Square Garden, not only to watch the Knicks win the game, but also to watch Ewing, Oakley, and Mason fight with their opponents like the ancient Colosseum.
Times may be changing, but audiences are not. If you're not convinced, you can look at the comparison of the number of views of the Clash and Goal Highlights.
Perhaps because of the participation of Jazz players, we have seen friends who compare this conflict with the classic wrestling shows of Malone and Rodman, which is not advisable to cross the level. When I watch the three top forwards of the 90s crawl and stumble all the way, I think of the scene of the giants fighting each other in "Attack on Titan", but the conflict between Gobert and Turner in warm embraces and arms rotation only reminds me of the female classmates who went downstairs to buy things arm in arm when I was a student, even worse than the conflict between Towns and Embiid two years ago - at least the push and hug between Tang and the Emperor looked really powerful. Unlike Turner and Gobert, who are just perfunctory.
We can even define this physical contact as a "conflict" rather than a "fight" – how can it be considered a fight without even a punch? Instead of looking at this, look at Chris Paul's cannon fist warning a few more times, and in his and Ingram's stabbing punches that you come and go, hit or don't hit, maybe you can hear the chanting in the dark: "42 to 6, 42 to 6, 42 to 6..."
To say that the other day Jokic pushed Maurice's hand seemed old enough, but the subsequent development caused by this incident was shockingly modernized. When Mr. Joe stood on the court and Morris fell to the ground with his head held, none of the Heat players had to stand up to Jokic for an explanation, but after the game, they fermented classic passages such as "blocking the door in the locker room under the cover of security" and "social media to make harsh remarks". For spectators who want to see a bloody battle, this conflict is too much to do, and they can only hope that the Heat can do a whole new job in the game against the Nuggets at miami at the end of the month - after all, it is the stadium that Alonzo Morningn and P.J. Brown have guarded with iron fists.
Players in the social media era really like to work on Weibo. Embiid and Towns confronted each other on social media after playing on the court, and the phrase "I grew up in the lions and was scratched by a cat tonight" is still fresh in my mind; the conflict between Jokic and Morris has progressed to the brotherhood Twitter Battle, which ended with Morris's "Mom won't let me tweet anymore." You can think of this as a more realistic and vivid example of players in the digital age, but at the same time, old fans will feel that such a league is "almost meaningless".
What fans want to see, players don't necessarily want to act. Gobert said in a post-game interview yesterday: "On the basketball court, I don't fight. I also know that we are not going to fight, so there is no need for you to put this matter on the line. "Considering the way he hugged Turner after he pushed and shoved him, we should know that Gobert was a man of understanding. He is neither willing to suffer losses on the pitch nor to back down in conflict, because that would not help the three-time best defensive player to create a tough personality in the minds of fans and the media, but that does not mean that he is willing to throw punches, ban games, pay fines and bear the consequences of being injured.
Yes, the league did let go of the scale, and the stadium conflicts became more numerous. Behind these conflicts, I saw a lot of friends clapping their hands and applauding, saying that the "bloodiness" of basketball players had returned. This may be the nostalgia of the older generation of fans for the hand-to-hand combat era they once saw, but the times have changed after all. The era of players tearing at each other like octagonal caged fighting beasts is over, and even if today's players play the anger of conflict in a renewed physical confrontation, that era will not come back after all — not to mention, they still play badly. Perhaps, the NBA's active players should really learn how to fight, even if they really want to hold the fall, they should fall like Barkley did back then.
In addition to learning to fight, players should learn how to protect themselves in more stadium conflicts that can be imagined – Rudi TomJanovic, who once tasted his brain plasma, must know what I am talking about.
Many fans love to watch the fierce clashes between the players, but they always forget that the conflict on the pitch is risky. Players are throwing punches at each other on the field, essentially risking suspensions, injuries and even career ruin. You can't always make you look good and make the players fight with their lives. Who can pack tickets and the blood-curdling stadium conflict will not rise to the level of dreaded stadium violence? If players really suffer misfortune in the violence on the pitch, who can pay for their tragedy?
If you really want to see a fist-to-flesh showdown, I can show you the way: Jazz celebrities, who have never announced their retirement, but deron Williams, who no one wants, has just officially announced that he will turn to boxing, if you really want to see NBA players swinging punches, maybe you look at that more appropriate...