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Mercy Rule in Basketball?

The Denver Nuggets beat the New Orleans Hornets 121 - 63 last night.  That is not a misprint, nor is it the score from your last video game.  I have never, in my lifetime of watching basketball, witnessed a beat down like that.  Actually, no one in history has ever seen one worse, as that 58-point margin of victory matched the largest playoff blowout in NBA history.  That game reminded me of when I was seven years old playing T-ball.  If any one team went up by double figures in the game, the umpire stopped the game due to a "run rule".  After all, there was no point in having 7 year old boys stuck out in the sun all afternoon when one team was just so completely better than the other.

Apparently the NBA needs to adopt such a mercy rule, because despite the absolute shellacking that the Nuggets put on the Hornets last night, these two teams will be forced to play again since the Nuggets only lead the series 3 - 1.  Honestly, if I'm a Hornets player, I don't even know how I look at a Nugget eye-to-eye next game, let alone try to play against them.  A girls basketball coach was recently fired for letting his team win 100 - 0, and this game wasn't much more competitive than that. 

I mean really, what good could come from these two teams playing again?  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Hornets aren't recovering from this to win in Denver, and they probably know it.  Even last night, several Hornets players started throwing bows and pushing after the whistle...do we really want to let this fester for two more days and risk someone getting taken out or suspended in what appears to be a meaningless game?

I say that we should let the Hornets keep whatever dignity they may have left, and just go on about their business while the Nuggets prepare for the next round of the playoffs.  The Hornets players are hurt, and based off last night they don't really seem to want to play anymore.  Let Chris Paul and David West go fishing with Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith now, instead of making them wait until later in the week.  It is the only humane thing to do.