Stern should bench heavy-handed style

Can we have our violence back?

Commissioner David Stern actually started his campaign to stamp out violence in the ‘90s, when it was a good idea.

Unfortunately, it evolved, or mutated, into last week’s management riot, transforming the exciting Suns-Spurs series in the executive wing’s answer to the Auburn Hills riot.

Suspending the Suns’ Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for breaking a rule and running up to an incident provoked by the Spurs’ Robert Horry was so wrong for so many reasons, a fifth-grader could have made the call.

After the Suns lost Game 5 in Phoenix and Game 6 in San Antonio with its players back, a crushed Steve Nash said it would “forever haunt” them. It will also haunt this postseason, if not this league.

Stern, who has a polished and feared legal mind, had one job: figure out a way around this.

Why else did God give him that brain and the owners give him that $6-million salary?

This is the precipice the NBA clings to today: Stern is so terror-stricken at the thought of another Auburn Hills, he didn’t even think he had a choice, not to mention the fact he really doesn’t like being challenged.

On the positive side, he did uphold the sanctity of the rule against leaving the bench.

Well, at least until it’s changed this summer.

Stern has roiled and shocked NBA players for years, hoping to turn their image around -- an initiative undercut by the fact he doesn’t have them onboard.

The result is an endless cycle of theatrics and massive retaliation. You may call this madness; the NBA called it the 2006-07 season:

* In training camp, Indiana’s Stephen Jackson breaks up a fight outside a club by firing his pistol in the air.

* Boston’s Sebastian Telfair is questioned by New York police after having a $50,000 necklace ripped from his neck, before a shooting outside a club.

* The NBA rolls out Spalding’s new Edward Scissorhands ball, which actually cuts players’ hands. After 10 loud weeks, Stern says the players are paramount and goes back to the old ball.

* Under a new “zero-tolerance” rule, referees issue technicals if players as much as make faces. After a turbulent month, the league quietly backs down.

* The Nuggets and Knicks rumble. Stern’s sentences, including a 15-game suspension for Carmelo Anthony, exceed all expectations, as usual.

* Kobe Bryant is branded as a thug as the league suspends him twice for hitting opponents in his follow-through.

Last week’s horror show was the maraschino cherry atop the sundae. Stung, Stern went on ESPN Radio with Dan Patrick in the NBA version of Michael Dukakis climbing into that tank.

“You know what?” said Stern, angered at Patrick’s suggestion that the suspensions could cost Phoenix a victory in Game 5. “I’m going to wrestle with you. And you better stop that!

“It’s not going to be decided by that. It’s being decided by two Phoenix Suns who knew about the rule, forgot about it, couldn’t control themselves and didn’t have coaches that could control them! And don’t you forget it!

“Now, is it exactly fair? Probably not.”

And don’t you forget it?

Lacking Stern’s silver tongue, NBA Vice President Stu Jackson just put it out there, saying, “It’s not a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of correctness.”

And that’s their defense?

Actually, there is one. That just wasn’t it.

Within hours of Stern’s radio appearance, Stephen Jackson, now a Warrior, clotheslined Utah’s Dee Brown as he and his teammates, whose upset of Dallas had thrilled the nation, went out like a bunch of brats who’d been allowed to stay up too late.

“We get carried away with our emotions,” Coach Don Nelson said afterward.

“But you know what? You take our emotions away, we’re not very good.”

In other words, as long as we don’t start an actual brawl, everything’s cool.

(Stern should try fining the teams instead of disciplining the players. See who has control of what if Warriors owner Chris Cohan has to come up with $100,000.)

The players’ hip-hop style is blamed for the league’s troubles, but there’s more to it, as Patrick proceeded to demonstrate.

Before Game 6, Patrick said an unidentified player told him that Dick Bavetta would referee, which they concluded meant the league wanted the Spurs-Suns series to go seven games.

Actually, as conspiracy theory goes, they got it wrong: Bavetta’s appearance is supposed to mean the home team will win (which doesn’t check out statistically). Since he lives in New York, he was called “Knick Bavetta.”

Welcome to David Stern’s world.

The NBA is bombarded with this nonsense, from within as well as without, every day.

Making it all the more insufferable, this happens to the NBA -- which has never even been seriously accused of fixing anything -- and the NBA, alone.

Baseball’s playoff ratings dive when the Yankees are eliminated, but no one says so-and-so was sent to umpire so they would win. There are no stories about the NFL rigging things to get big-market teams into the Super Bowl.

Be that as it may, the NBA’s worst problem is everyone in the NBA.

I’ve always considered Stern a giant. The NBA had the first salary cap and was the last major league to suffer a labor stoppage. In the slickest move of all, he kept the network dollars flowing and now gets more than baseball.

I can’t imagine an NBA without Stern, but if the commissioner keeps making more news than his players, his usefulness is at an end.

*

mark.heisler@latimes.com