To say that the NFL is having an image problem would vastly be understating the current state of the league's image from a public relations standpoint. It would be more accurate to say that the league is having an image crisis and Ray Rice along with the NFL's commissioner Roger Goodell are the faces of it.
While Ray Rice's NFL career is likely over, the future of the league's all-mighty commissioner Roger Goodell remains very much in question. It is unclear whether or not the owners will give him the boot, especially after hearing a fair amount of them voice their own support for him.
Now what you are probably wondering at this point is why am I talking about the NFL on an NBA blog? I mean, doesn't this Ray Rice case only concern the NFL? While on the surface the answer is yes, there is a deeper level in which this case absolutely concerns the NBA, which has to do with how the NBA will react to future cases of domestic violence committed by its own players.
While the NFL reacted poorly to finding out that Ray Rice committed an act of domestic violence against his fiancé, they did eventually suspend him indefinitely and his team did eventually release him from their roster. The right thing did eventually happen, though it took a lot of public outcry.
After seeing the way people acted strongly against the NFL, the tolerance level for domestic violence is well below zero, which means that in the event that one of their own stars commits domestic violence, the NBA has no choice but to suspend the player indefinitely with the team also facing the pressure to release the player.
Now, there are a couple of things that make this Ray Rice case unusual or unique. Before I state what those things are, I want to make it explicitly clear that I treat every case of domestic violence as equally bad and serious.
Now, what makes this case unusual or unique is that the act of domestic violence committed by Ray Rice was caught on tape and the NFL had easy access to the tape. What makes this important is that by having this empirical evidence against Ray Rice, the case against him is made airtight. The same cannot be said for situations in which there is no video or auditory evidence to go by.
In cases that don't have such strong evidence, it is only fair for "due process" to play itself out before any harsh suspensions or actions come from the league. If the team wants to sit a player out amid "due process", I'm more than fine with that, but by no means should the league feel obligated to step in and lay down a harsh suspension.
But in a situation like Ray Rice where there is audio and video evidence against the player, the league really has no choice but to suspend him indefinitely. As for the team, they similarly have no choice but to disassociate themselves from the player and cut him.
The NBA has to take note of this and understand that when they are faced with a situation identical to the Ray Rice case both in quality of evidence and stature of player, they have to take the harshest possible measures or else they too will have an image problem.
Now, the NBA has been battling racism as of late with the Danny Ferry and Donald Sterling cases, but while those cases are very serious in their own right, they cannot be said to be logically identical to cases of domestic violence. There are parallels to draw from such as having a zero-tolerance policy and suspending offenders, but I think the fact that domestic violence involves one person harming another person makes it even more serious.
Where I'm going with this is that the NBA isn't exactly going through the same thing as the NFL right now by having issues with racism. Domestic violence is a whole other animal and the NBA has to be prepared to act as tough as possible when they are faced with it.
The Ray Rice case is a wake up call for the NFL, the NBA, and every other professional sports league. We live in a society in which acts of domestic violence are taken a lot more seriously and received a lot more harshly. The NBA has to recognize this and think to themselves "Maybe we're next. Maybe one of our superstars gets busted for domestic violence."
The NBA has to be ready to act as harshly as possible and throw down the gauntlet when one of its stars acts in this manner. We saw how the Pacers reacted to Paul George supporting Ray Rice, but will that same attitude transfer over to cases in which a player actually commits an act of domestic violence? I hope we never have to find out, but unfortunately I believe the NBA will eventually find itself in a similar predicament. When they do let's hope that they learned some lessons from how the NFL grossly mishandled the Ray Rice case so as to not make the same horrible and embarrassing mistakes.
---Ben Parker: follow me on twitter @nba_lord
