Memos from the commissioners can’t curb NFL hits and NBA snits

We have an epidemic of powerful men in sports, sitting behind desks and writing memos. There is no cure.

But there is a proper reaction to what the NFL and NBA commissioners are trying to do. Respect it, pay attention to it and see it for what it is.

The NFL’s Roger Goodell has the more serious problem. Each weekend, his league is making more than its share of contributions to the rapid rise of brain damage in this country. Games are becoming battlefields. Bodies are strewn about, stretchers brought in. In soccer, those are auditions for acting careers. In football, it’s real.

As long as it has existed, the NFL has been demolition derby with helmets and cleats. Collisions are necessitated by the rules. Play doesn’t stop until somebody is tackled.

To his credit, Goodell doesn’t like the parade of stretchers, nor the former players now in their 50s and 60s who twitch and stutter while they talk to him. His game is a breeding ground for head injuries, some serious immediately and many more with the passage of time.

So he has written memos, calling attention to the matter. He has gone public. He is trying to tweak the rules and has even gotten specific about what players can and cannot do with their heads when making tackles. He has used his best tool available — the threat of increased fines.

The NBA’s David Stern has a less life-threatening problem.

His surveys show that, while his product continues to prosper as a brand and attendance erosion is minimal, many paying customers are sick of the steady diet of player confrontations with referees. They pay to see the superb basketball skills of, say, a Kobe Bryant, not the whining and endless negotiations over officials’ calls.

So Stern has directed the reemphasis of an approach he first floated in 2006 called “Respect for the Game Guidelines.” It is two typewritten pages of do’s and don’ts that boil down to John Wooden’s mandate to all his teams, as well as a banner for life conduct. Wooden said, “Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Don’t make excuses.”

Stern is using this exhibition season as the stage-setter. Teams have been told. The referees will have a short fuse.

There is no shortage of specifics: For example, Article 2, Players Complaining About Officiating; section b — “[includes] comments concerning calls or non-calls that are made in an unprofessional or disrespectful manner [e.g., asking, in a hostile or sarcastic manner, about the number of fouls called against the opposing team] whether directed to or away from an official.”

Other specifics deal with questioning officials’ integrity; profanity; disrespectful action; continual criticism or inquiry. Fines can be as much as $50,000. There were 672 technicals called all of last season. In exhibitions Tuesday night, 18 were called.

The Clippers played Sacramento at Staples Center and Brian Cook got a taste of Stern’s intent. Late in the first period, the Kings’ Francisco Garcia drove and Cook tried to block his shot. A foul was called and Cook made a gesture, brushing his hands together as if to indicate that he thought he had gotten all ball. Oops. Technical.

There were three more technicals of similar variety called, ticky-tack stuff. All were warnings that this is how it is going to be when the real season starts next week.

Of course, it won’t be. This was tried in the 2006 exhibition season, and by late November, all was forgotten.

Goodell and Stern are under pressure from many places. The NFL’s tough, tailgating fans want to see those hard hits, helmet to helmet, face mask to sternum, that Goodell wants eliminated. Those fans are encouraged every night on “SportsCenter” and every other TV outlet that picks out the best hits for the best TV and ratings. The NFL’s cocktail-and-munching suite-goers want it less, and represent more the sponsorship and investor side, with more to lose with every stretcher appearance.

The medical community is also hot after Goodell.

The reality is that both commissioners want safety, clean play and good sportsmanship. Both also know it is smart, and butt-protecting, to give it a try, publicly face the music, write the memos.

But Goodell has to know it’s impossible to make a 255-pound linebacker stop and think before he tackles. That player has been taught all his life — brainwashed, really — to strike fast and let instincts take over. Football players don’t dance, they collide.

And Stern knows that the first time Kobe is sent off with a second ticky-tack technical on a network telecast, say against the Miami Heat, that the same customers who were screaming for less whining will now be screaming for the commissioner’s head.

Any changes will be gradual. Professional athletes are bigger, stronger, faster and angrier. They train more, likely use more performance-enhancing drugs and have much more money at stake.

Goodell and Stern are making good tries. They are to be commended. But the reality is that they are both ice rinks and the games over which they rule are Zambonis.

bill.dwyre@latmes.com