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A different scale is set for NBA players

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The best team in one NFL conference has a player with more guns than the National Guard. The best team in the other NFL conference starts two players who have tested positive for steroids. And yet it’s the NBA that’s dealing with an image problem?

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is enjoying the best inheritance since the Rockefeller family. The NFL isn’t just bulletproof, it’s gun-proof. Defensive tackle Tank Johnson of the NFC-leading Chicago Bears was suspended for one game Tuesday, about a week after his third arrest in 18 months, this time after police allegedly found six unregistered firearms in his home. This news came the day after the Dallas Cowboys’ Terrell Owens was fined $35,000 for spitting on Atlanta cornerback DeAngelo Hall. And the day after the San Diego Chargers won their 12th game thanks in part to Shawne Merriman and Luis Castillo, both of whom have tested positive for steroids.

Criminal behavior, classless behavior, performance-enhancing drugs. If there’d been a paternity suit, we’d have the grand slam of what’s wrong with sports today. And not even that combination was enough to launch a run of “What’s-wrong-with-the-NFL?” headlines.

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The NFL is as popular as ever, still delivering stellar ratings in this era of fractured viewership, not to mention an unprecedented sellout of every game for the first 11 weeks of the season. Arrests, spitting, suspensions? Eh, these things happen.

Meanwhile, black basketball players fighting apparently is such an issue that it even competed for weekend air time with that other staple of saturation coverage -- missing white people (on Oregon’s Mt. Hood). The reaction to the New York Knicks-Denver Nuggets fight Saturday night has prompted players and fans alike to wonder whether there’s a racial undertone to the extra attention paid to whatever goes wrong with the NBA.

“In other sports, there are incidents that are way worse than basketball,” Knicks guard Steve Francis said. “But because there are more black players in the NBA, it’s under the microscope more than baseball or hockey.”

Yes, there will always be racial components when you’re dealing with a league in which more than 70% of the players are African American. But it’s not that simple in this case. The NFL has a similar proportion of African American players (66% last year, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport), and almost all of the notable misdeeds, right down to the stomp on a helmet-less head by Tennessee’s Albert Haynesworth -- have been committed by African Americans.

Somehow NFL players have received the status normally reserved for white people in America: the right to be judged individually, not collectively. After Timothy McVeigh blew up that building in Oklahoma City, security guards didn’t cast a suspicious eye on every white man driving past a federal building. But ask any person of Middle Eastern descent how hard it was for them to board an airplane after Sept. 11.

The same double-standard goes for the NFL. At most a misdeed will be grouped by a team, such as the rash of arrests of those on the Cincinnati Bengals roster. But it’s rare to see the leap from “that guy” to “those thugs” in “that league,” which is what happens when an NBA player does something dumb.

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It starts with a difference in marketing philosophy. In the NFL, the players are in the league. In the NBA, the league is the players. It’s noticeable in the subtle order of tabs on the league websites. On NBA.com, it’s teams, players, scores, standings, stats, schedule, and so on. On NFL.com, it’s news, scores, stats, schedules, standings, teams and then players.

The NBA has always sold the personality of its players and the close proximity the fans have with them. In cases such as Saturday that can backfire, as Nate Robinson and J.R. Smith rolled over the courtside seats.

When NBA Commissioner David Stern announced the fines and suspensions Monday, he heard the old image issue again.

Stern knew what the questioner was getting at, and he said he would “delicately sidestep” the matter for now. In the past, he has said his greatest professional accomplishment is presiding over the growth of a league that was considered “too black” when he took over in 1984, and that its success could allow black players such as Michael Jordan to become the most recognized athletes in the world.

At times such as these, Stern sees how that can work against them.

“Our players are more visible,” Stern said. “They are better known, they play a game where the best seat in sports is a courtside seat watching players without helmets, long sleeves, long pants. No glass [around the playing surface]. And the camera captures that as well.

“Over the years, that’s been our burden. But that’s also been our opportunity.

“I think we’re judged by a stronger standard because of our game and because of our willingness to engage. We could have players coming off the bench the same way players come out of the dugout [in baseball]. We could have players stop and fight, the way they do in other sports that I won’t name but are played on skates. But we don’t. Not only don’t we encourage it, not only don’t we permit it, but we prohibit it. Having taken that tack, we’re going to be judged harshly by it. And I understand.”

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The truth is, fighting was a bigger problem in the glory days, even among the big names. Larry Bird and Julius Erving scrapped in Boston Garden. Robert Parish beat down Bill Laimbeer in a playoff game. Michael Jordan clawed at Reggie Miller.

Last season, three NBA players were suspended a total of nine games for throwing punches, an exemplary lack of fisticuffs for 30 teams playing an 82-game schedule.

But any fight on the scale of Knicks-Nuggets on Saturday night stands out because it conjures up images of the Malice at the Palace of Auburn Hills in November 2004. The sight of black players attacking white fans had undeniable racial reverberations.

They’re still felt now, more than two years later, when the league can’t move past 2004, while the NFL just moves on to Week 16.

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read more by Adande, go to latimes.com/adandeblog.

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