I ADMIT it. Sometimes the ego can’t suppress, “I told you so.” Especially where it concerns the likes of brats who need a good spanking. The Mark Cubans of the sports world, for example. Allow me to explain:
One of the smartest things the Knicks ever did was kill an in-house promotion before it killed the Knicks.
For a brief period in the 1993-94 season, as part of a deal with Pizza Hut, the Knicks encouraged patrons to hold on to their ticket stubs then exchange them for a free, personal-size pizza if the Knicks held their opponents to under 85 points. In Nov. 1993, scoring 84 points in an NBA game usually meant you lost by 10, not won by 10.
While many patrons – especially kids – got a charge out of the promotion, the Knicks soon realized that it was having a needlessly dangerous impact on play.
“What seemed like an innocent promotion at the start began to dictate some of the activity late in games,” John Cirillo, the Knicks’ VP of public relations at the time, recalled Friday. “Fans started chanting, ‘Pizza!’ And players on both sides were responding and getting too involved. We pulled it before someone got hurt for nothing.”
The promotion’s inherent dangers included:
Players, especially those who came off the bench in garbage time, becoming excessively eager to play hero to pizza-minded fans. High-risk garbage time would ensue. With fans chanting, “Pizza,” some Knicks would play nose-to-nose D. The prospect of a hard, basket-stopping foul and ensuing injuries, fights and suspensions – all in the name of mass-produced pizza – was inescapable.
The pizza promo also would create garbage-time resolve among Knick opponents to score, thus the most inconsequential time within a game held the promise of becoming the most physical and volatile time. It would inspire unsportsmanlike conduct between the teams and among the fans.
Also, folks attending games would become consumed by winning pizza – the Knicks had gifted them an under-85 bet, after all – instead of enjoying or appreciating the game. We heard from two fathers whose young sons, despite a Knick victory, left the Garden upset because the Knicks failed to cover the pizza spread. Lovely.
Of course, having written the above, urging the Knicks to kill the promotion before they regretted it, I heard from the “lighten up” lobby demanding to know why I was so eager to kill this particular form of fun. The scenarios I had presented, they claimed, were pure fantasy, authored by a party-pooper.
And when Pat Riley then pulled the plug on the pizza promotion after only a couple of games, believe it or not, I was widely blamed for depriving fans of the chance to both have fun and win a pizza. Odd, I can’t even get my kids to take the garbage out.
Thursday night in Dallas against the Cavs, Cuban’s Mavericks provided fans with a chalupa promotion. If the Mavs scored 100 or more points, everyone in the joint would be issued a 99-cent coupon for a Taco Bell chalupa.
Late in the game, the Mavs had it won. They were up by 20. But the fans began to boo. Well, of course they did. They were concerned that their hometown heroes weren’t paying enough attention to winning them chalupas (or chalupae, if that’s the plural of chalupa). They then began to chant, “Chalupa! Chalupa!”
With three seconds left, Dallas’ Gary Trent, taking the cue, chose not to dribble out the clock. He scored to reach the magic number. The crowed went nuts. So did Cleveland’s Wesley Person. Enraged that Trent tried to rub it in, he went after Trent, and the two began to tangle. There were other on-court hassles. Punches were thrown.
Even the two head coaches, Donnie Nelson and Randy Wittman, swapped angry words and appeared on the verge of throwing hands.
A full-fledged brawl was barely averted.
And, of course, Cuban, fabulously wealthy and an attention hog – a most ugly but common combination among modern team owners – rushed on to the court from his courtside seat.
Friday afternoon, the NBA acted, swift justice befitting a hassle inspired by fast-food. Cuban was suspended for two games – sent to his estate without dessert – and the Mavs were fined $10,000. The Cavs’ Robert Traylor was suspended for one game and fined $5,000 for throwing a punch at Courtney Alexander.
Cuban, the dark side of Richie Rich, had already been fined $395,000 by the NBA this season. But leading with his petulance and his adolescent his propensity for self-promotion, Cuban has proudly exploited the payments to add to his naughty mystique.
Friday’s Dallas Morning News carried the pertinent quotes.
Person: “It’s bigger than chalupas. Their coach called a play with 10 seconds left in a 20-point game. That’s disrespect.” Good point.
Trent: “Our fans were booing us, that’s why I was trying to score.” Bad point. Up 20, the game won, the Mavs’ fans were booing their home team? For what, Gary?
Nelson: “We had guys out there who needed work. We’re not going to sit there and dribble the clock out.” Oh, please.
Wittman: “That’s unprofessional. I don’t care what they have to say. You ask anyone in the league – Do you try to run the clock out or do you try to embarrass somebody?” Good rhetorical question.
“We’ll remember it,” added Wittman. Oh, great.
While Wittman’s veiled threat remains vague and open, what’s immediately clear is that an NBA game became secondary to chalupas. A full-scale brawl nearly erupted over a 99-cent fast-food promotion. It could’ve been pizza. It could’ve been the Knicks.
I told you so.
*
THURSDAY’S Chalupa Caper inspired some noteworthy dialogue that night on Fox Sports Net’s “National Sports Report.”
Fox NBA analyst and ex-NBAer Jack Haley scolded the Mavericks. “You should win with class,” he said, adding that class seems to elude whatever Cuban touches.
But anchor Kevin Frazier, despite the video evidence that had just appeared, evidence that clearly presented some ugly and predictable consequences to Chalupa Nights, blew us away by stating that he approved of the promotion. “It’s entertainment,” he said/rationalized. And, boy, am I sick of bad stuff in sports being excused as “entertainment.”
Yeah, it’s entertainment the same way taunting, chest-pounding and the XFL are entertaining. It entertains those who can’t distinguish an idiot’s delight from a basketball game, a sucker punch from a sport and a Mark Cuban from a sportsman.
The transience of major league players and major league teams knows no boundaries. The Mets, by way of example, for 26 years held spring training in St. Petersburg before a better deal lured them to Port St. Lucie. Now, the Mets and West Palm Beach threaten to do to Port St. Lucie what the Mets and Port St. Lucie did to St. Pete.
This morning’s “Outside the Lines” (ESPN 10:30), studies the coquettish business of spring training, with the Mets serving as the primary case study.
Phil Mushnick appears regularly in New York Post Sports Week.