The Chris Paul-Rajon Rondo Fight Says a Lot About the Health of Today's NBA

The brawl that punctuated LeBron James’s home debut as a Laker was brief—it flared up and died down in less than a minute. But from a content standpoint it was a damn goldmine, as NBA Twitter stayed up past its bedtime contemplating Rajon Rondo’s spittle, and wondering whose side James was on, really. The fight didn’t overshadow a competitive game—it made it into something memorable. The heavy fines and suspensions handed out today are meant to show that the league takes such matters very seriously. Instead, they succeeded only in making the situation more antic and bizarre.

In theory, there’s no place for violence in basketball. While ‘90s fetishists who loved the Heat vs. Knicks will tell you otherwise, the game is most fully-realized when it’s soaring, limber, and balletic, with even power players in the lane absorbed in a state of grace. Over the past decade, the league has sought to legislate hard fouls and rough defense out of existence via rule changes and tight officiating. Anyone lamenting that the game’s gone soft, or that today’s players wouldn’t stand a chance in past eras, is either a killjoy or a former player trying to make himself relevant. The on-court product has never been stronger and that’s due in large part to where the league has steered it.

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It’s because of this extravagant health that Saturday night didn’t devolve into a referendum on the sport, which is exactly what happened in the wake of 2004’s Malice in the Palace. Today, it’s a colorful piece of basketball lore. Ron Artest was absolutely justified in going after the fan who tossed a beer on him, Stephen Jackson cemented his legend by following him into the stands, and Jermaine O’Neal sliding across the floor to land a punch on a fan’s face is the stuff of video games. At the time, though, it was no laughing matter. These were dark days for the NBA, in large part because the players were perceived as “thugs” with zero regard for common decency. It didn’t help that the prevailing style of play was sluggish and iso-heavy, which both alienated casual fans and gave them something else to blame on the players (racism is a helluva drug).

By contrast, the Lakers-Rockets melee was pure entertainment, and not just because it was players-only. And not only did it get a pass. It tapped into a lot of what makes the NBA compelling in 2018. In large part because the game itself is in such good shape, players get to be complex personalities, rather than one-dimensional grunts measured solely in terms of success and failure. We understand more about them than ever—social media certainly helps here—which means more storylines, more complex storylines, and more material to work with as we watch. This all sounds very heavy and intense and yes, it greatly ratchets up the level of drama around the league. But it also makes things that much more fun. The more we know, the more ways we know how to laugh, and it’s hard to imagine the NBA without a healthy dose of humor.

This enhanced appeal could not come at a better time for the league. The Warriors won’t be around forever, at least not in their current, indomitable form. But at least for the next two seasons, they’ll be the prohibitive favorites to win it all. The fatalism this engenders should be cause for alarm. If the outcome of the season is a foregone conclusion, why are fans supposed to care? Certainly, some have gotten better at being “students of the game” who appreciate players across the sport on a technical or aesthetic level. But that remains, relatively speaking, a niche audience. Interlocking narratives give fans something to do instead of worrying about titles. And by and large, these narratives are grist for comedy. Even longstanding grudges and resentments become punchlines. With the sport’s ultimate goal off the table, there’s nothing left to do but have fun. The league and its players can never fully cop to this but it’s unmistakably a part of how the sport is presented to us, as an awesome athletic spectacle, sure, but also as first-rate entertainment.

When the Lakers signed Rondo, JaVale McGee, Lance Stephenson, and Michael Beasley, there were jokes that James was loading up for a reality show rather than deep playoff run. Factor in the looming LaVar Ball, as well as James’s own penchant for hamming it up, and it’s a fair bet the Lakers will be the league’s goofiest team by a wide margin. In the traditional, performance-geared sense, they don’t have an identity yet. But when it comes to personality (or personalities), the Lakers are the equivalent of the Warriors. It takes a special kind of conspiracy nut to speculate that James, who understands this stuff as well as anyone, has assembled this team on purpose to produce quality content. That’s different from saying that he absolutely will capitalize on the appeal of these Lakers—something we should all be very excited about.

If in 2004 a brawl threatened to destroy the NBA, today it only makes the league stronger. Players aren’t vilified for violence but are applauded because it’s exactly the kind of distraction from the Warriors that keeps us watching. Hardcore fans are always going to watch but the fact that they’re practically encouraged to tease out subplots and fire off inside jokes makes it alive, rich, and participatory. It turns watching sports from a passive activity to one that really engages viewers. It’s a culture that’s spread well beyond the corners of the internet that spawned, and to a large degree, now feed it. For the time being at least, we consume the NBA as fun or light-hearted. The Warriors leave us no other choice. When they’re gone, and caring deeply is no longer a farce, the NBA will probably be less gleefully absurd. But that’s all the more reason to enjoy this moment of heightened lunacy while you can.