2 Questions for David Stern

I guess it's more like 2 topics to discuss with Stern, since each will likely end up having several questions that I think fans of the NBA deserve to have answered.

First topic: What is the league doing to prevent NBA teams from putting some unimportant player in a game to start an "altercation" to get important players to take a few steps off the bench? I read one ESPN columnist suggest that if that happened, it would be really obvious and the NBA would sniff it out and punish the team accordingly. My response to that would be: it just happened. No punishment for the Spurs and they got exactly what they wanted. In a league where the head coach has an extremely high salary and extremely low job security, there's a lot to benefit from having a couple of important guys on the opposing team sit out. Especially when winning a series may mean that a coach gets to keep his job. Also, it'll always be easy to find someone in America who's willing to accept a $1 million per year pay check to be a professional fan who's willing to start altercations on call. So what is the NBA doing? I see nothing being done and that's a problem.

Second topic: How can a player be punished for another player's action? David Stern's initial response to this would be that Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were punished for their own actions because they got off the bench. That's true, but that's not entirely why they are being punished. So I would have to start off with the incident involving Duncan in the 2nd quarter. If Jumaine Jones would've punched Elson in the face after they got tangled up, would Tim Duncan have been suspended? If the answer is no, I would call Stern a biased Spurs fans that's using his power to give his favorite team the best chance at winning. If the answer is yes, I would say why is Duncan being punished for the actions of Jumaine Jones? Duncan didn't do anything differently, but if you can call it an altercation, he gets punished. The same thing goes for Amare and Diaw—they were running to help Nash when it was a flagrant foul, not an altercation. When it became an altercation, they ran back to the bench. So why are Amare and Diaw being punished because Horry and Bell and other players on the court escalated it to a so-called altercation?

If he can't answer those questions well enough to satisfy the fans, he should be removed from his duties as NBA commissioner and he can take Stu Jackson with him. The NBA is headed for a downward spiral, and eventually some star in their prime will get frustrated enough to sign with a European team that's willing to pay NBA money for the recognition they'd get.