I mean, I used to think he was kind of a douche in general, but he’s grown on me. Before this season, I thought the Hornets should trade him because I thought he was selfish, unserious, soft, and injury prone. He seems to mature this season and dialed back a lot of the things he used to do on the court that used to annoy me, although he seemed to go back to some of that a little bit last night. But being a dirty player has never been his MO. You can find dirty plays committed by virtually every NBA player. It doesn’t mean they’re all dirty players. Most of the time no one gets hurt when those dirty plays are committed. But you might as not like almost any NBA player.
he's young... his shots didn't look bad they just didn't go in.
That was game 82 for Kon - I think he's hit the rookie wall the last few weeks. Kon leads the team in minutes this year.
Nah, you can’t throw a blanket over the entire league and say “they all do it.” That’s highly disingenuous and doesn’t hold a drop of water. Plenty of elbows and jersey grabs and hip checks every which way… but ain’t nobody buying it that everyone does crap like this. Very few do.
I’m fine saying it’s dirty but it doesn’t mean Melo is a POS who needs to face karma. I mean, he might be a POS in general (not necessarily saying he is, but he may be), but not so much as a player.
Anything can happen in one game but I like the Hornets chances against either one of those. Hornets have been better than either of them for the past couple of months.
Been reported that Kon has been having back issues over the last couple of weeks.
I don’t think anyone gets suspended for that move if they don’t call it on the floor.
It actually would have been bullshit if he were suspended as it would have been inconsistent with NBA rules. In order to be suspended for a game based on the commission of flagrant fouls, a player has to accumulate above a certain number of penalty points. Flagrant 1s are assessed 1 point each and flagrant 2s are assessed 2 points each. Game suspensions result if a player accumulates more than 5 penalty points during the regular season or more than 3 in the playoffs. I assume the play-in games are treated as a portion of the playoffs for this purpose. But a single flagrant foul, whether a 1 or 2, will not result in suspension.
The league office can levy a suspension for unsportsmanlike anytime they want, has nothing to do with points or accumulation or any of that. Especially if they see a history (whatever they deem to be considered history), which the video of Ball doing the same thing to Bam in 2024 was no doubt sitting in front of Silver yesterday, since it was all over ESPN and social media. They were well within policy to suspend him for Friday and plenty of talking heads were calling for it.
You are right that exceptions can be made. It would still be bullshit, however, considering how extremely rare such suspensions are. While I could be wrong, I don’t think anybody NBA player has been suspended for tripping another. Even with Draymond Green’s reputation, he didn’t even get penalized in 2016 for tripping Enes Kanter. (Maybe there as some plausible deniability that it was intentional?) The last two suspensions I’m aware of for a single flagrant foul were in 2022 when Grayson Allen grabbed one of Alex Caruso’s arms while he was going toward the basket for a shot then wound up his other arm and took a hard swing at Caruso’s head (and of course Allen had quite the reputation prior to that), and back in 2014 when Ronnie Price clotheslined Austin Rivers as he went up for a basket. And that last suspension was controversial. Just becuse the outraged angry masses are calling for a suspension, doesn’t mean the NBA should buck precedent and suspend Ball.
