The National Basketball Association has been a joke for a long, long time.

The league once had a “forceout” rule whereby a player could dribble the ball out of bounds and his team would be allowed to keep possession of the ball because a defender had been standing in-bounds where the offensive player wanted to go with the ball. Ludicrous.

Centers can beat the snot out of each other. They can push, pull and pound on each other without drawing a foul. One center can aggressively back into another in hopes of getting the ball passed to him, while the defensive center can push back just as hard – without getting whistled for a foul.

But guards and forwards can touch each other with one finger and it’s a foul. The inconsistency is laughable.

You know where I’m going with this.

Now, it’s okay to elbow a player in the head, knee a rival in the groin, kick his feet out from under him and there is no disciplinary action by the NBA.

But don’t you dare leave the bench when a goon cheap shots your teammate. Phoenix Suns’ stars Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw drew suspensions for walking toward San Antonio power thug Robert Horry after he hip-checked Suns’ guard Steve Nash to the floor in Game 4 Monday night. Stoudemire and Diaw didn’t get far in their oversized sneakers before they were hustled back to the bench by assistant coaches.

Nevertheless, the two Suns’ players were suspended by the league for Game 5 because they are human beings who react with disdain to violence. Because they are guilty of possessing human emotions. The NBA has a track record of suspending players one playoff game for displaying violence (Boston’s Robert Parrish for punching Detroit’s Bill Laimbeer; Houston’s Ralph Sampson for attacking Boston’s Jerry Sichting, for examples). However, it is clear that the NBA suspended Horry two games only for the purposes of attempting to justify one-game suspensions for the two Phoenix players. The ruling is a farce, but par for the NBA’s course in inconsistencies.

In retrospect, the entire Suns’ bench, including all the coaches, trainers and support staff, should have walked out onto the court and stood there. Would the NBA then have had the temerity to suspect all of them? Would the league have forced the Suns to play Game 5 with no coaches, no trainers and support staff, no substitutes? Would the NBA have then forced the Suns to play Game 5 with only the five players who were on the court at the time of Horry’s assault?

Many rules and laws have unintended consequences. The NBA’s rule against leaving the bench, intended to prevent brawls from escalating, is one such rule. The end result of Stoudemire’s and Diaw’s actions had no effect on the ensuing confrontation between Horry and Phoenix guard Rajah Bell. More importantly, the punishment far outweighed the imagined infraction.

The NBA rule is definitely going to be amended. But the damage of bad rule making is already done.

If the league does not amend the rule this summer, I recommend that an entire group of reserves leave the bench and stand passively on the court during a game next year – expose the weakness of the bench rule. The league will then be forced to make rational decisions on suspensions, or it will cheat paying customers out of quality entertainment in exchange for the high price of tickets purchased.

Regardless of the future of the bench clearing rule, the NBA has a long way to go to improve its reputation.

Dennis Durband is publisher and editor of The Arizona Conservative, is also a freelance writer and webmaster and a longtime journalist.