Some teams have developed standing habit of sitting down

The NBA was long overdue to take a stand on sitting. Versus, y'know, standing.

After hearing an increased number of complaints from ticket holders in the priciest ZIP codes of its arenas, the league issued a preseason memo reminding teams that players not in the game should remain seated when the ball is live. It allowed for spontaneous reactions to specific plays -- the "Hey! Did you see that!" moments we all experience at NBA games -- and naturally permits players to rise and walk to the scorer's table when it is their turn to sub in. But it wanted to clear out the long, tall loitering that was becoming a problem along the sidelines as non-participants, more and more, began to stand in their warm-ups, erecting human walls up to seven players wide and seven feet high.

Two weeks into the regular season, six weeks since the edict came down, we're unaware of any teams getting fined or even reprimanded for excessive standing. Backup players on two of the most egregious offenders from recent seasons, the Celtics and the Cavaliers, occasionally have been spied reminding themselves to park it -- Psst! We've gotta sit down. Pass it on! -- as they learn to break the bad habit. And since 11 teams woke up Friday with three or fewer victories, they didn't have much to stand up and get excited about anyway.

It's an understandable reaction, wanting to stand at critical moments. As an instinct, research suggests it was developed when the first saber-toothed tigers came sniffing around cave entrances; nothing could make Homo get erectus faster than the fear of becoming some carnivore's lunch. It was only a short leap from there to wanting a better view, and feeling the adrenalin, when Gork next door decided to poke that predator with the handiest sharp stick.

People stand up at concerts, too, although that's far more likely to occur for a Springsteen set than something by Shostakovich. It invariably leads, however, to escalation inflation: The folks in front of you stand up, so you stand up, prompting the people behind you stand up. Next thing anyone knows, you've all created a stadium "wave," only vertically rather than horizontally. Then the jackasses in front of you decide to stand on their seats.

See how rapidly someone can go from "folks" to "jackasses"? That's the problem with standing. Only rarely is it completely synchronized.

At the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, fans first of the Hornets and now of the Thunder injected some old college tradition by standing until the home team scores its first points. It was neat to see -- the first two or three or a dozen times. But if you show up at tipoff hungry, with a beverage in one hand and a plate of nachos in another, and you need a lap to rest something in, it can get old. If the Thunder starts with a scoreless four minutes, that gets old too.

I've always figured those seats are bolted there for a reason. They're to be used. If I wanted standing-room only views, I'd have bought those tickets. It comes down to basic courtesy and civic responsibility. If everyone parks their butts where they're supposed to, no one has to stand.

That's why, at a recent University of Minnesota football game, I could only laugh at the red-faced, maroon-and-gold clad fan who got mad at his fellow spectators for sitting. This forty-something bozo was on the rail, first row of the second deck, but he stood up as the Gophers' offense huddled for a third-and-long play. He then turned to the people behind him and hollered, "Tim Brewster said he wants us to stand on third downs! C'mon! Coach says we should stand!"

Excuse me? Coach wants us to stand? Last I checked, he worked for the taxpayers of Minnesota, not the other way around. More than a few of us snickered at Mr. Sis-Boom-Bah in front of us and went back to checking our text messages. (It was, after all, Gophers football.)

Sports can get tricky that way, with people forgetting just who is there for whom. Yes, in a sense, fans are there for the players, showing up to support, applaud, critique, marvel at and appreciate them. But players are there for the fans first, to entertain and thrill.

"You have to understand that the people sitting close to you want to see the game," San Antonio forward Richard Jefferson told me last week. "You have to be respectful of your business -- those people are paying the most money. The value of those seats goes down if no one can see the game from there. All of a sudden, less money from those seats, less money that goes in our pockets.

"There are times in a game where it's understandable for a team to stand up and root and cheer. But some teams were just excessive. It was like, 'Sit down, stop being cheerleaders in the middle of the second quarter.' "

When I first heard of the NBA's sit-down memo, I was a little sympathetic to the players, thinking of some places around the league where they have fairly lousy seats. Standing has to be preferable to sitting at Madison Square Garden, for instance, where the bench chairs traditionally were crammed together so closely that some players opted to park on the floor near the baseline. Only now that's verboten too -- instead of rich guys paying for seats, it's rich guys paying for ad exposure.

"The days when, where it was really tight, you could sit down on the baseline, you can't do that anymore," said Minnesota vice president of basketball operations Fred Hoiberg. "You can't sit against the signage anymore either, unless you have some sort of medical condition. Like Steve Nash with his back."

Hoiberg became something of an expert in bench etiquette over 10 seasons with Indiana, Chicago and Minnesota. In 541 career games, he was a sub 480 times. He knew where his teams' stars liked to sit when they came out of games, he knew where rookies were likely to be planted when a coach yanked them out for an earful of instructions. He knew where he liked to sit too.

"Some benches always had extra seats -- those were the ones I looked forward to sitting on," Hoiberg said. "In a place like Atlanta, they had, like, 15 seats. I always liked those. But in other arenas, they've got us packed in like sardines. It makes you want to stand up."

Remember, these guys are used to first-class flights. And Bentleys are known for their comfortable cushions. "Dallas has those chairs that I think NASA developed. They were the first ones with the really nice chairs," Hoiberg said. "Most of them are pretty standard."

It's clear that much of the standing was borne of thoughtlessness and false enthusiasm, along with a little one-upsmanship between teams. As in: If you're going to stand for the last five minutes, we'll stand for the whole fourth quarter. Oh yeah, the entire second half? Well then...

Certainly, the NBA itself loves those sideline shots in their highlights packages where even grizzled veteran players are on their feet, oohing and aahing and elbowing the teammate standing next to them about what they just saw. What the league, along with the Celtics, the Cavaliers and other transgressors seemed to forget was that their benches are not manned by a bunch of jockeys. There are only so many Earl Boykins, Spud Webbs and Muggsy Bogues to go around -- and see over. As for those coaches who spend most of the game pacing like Benny Hinn in full ministerin' mode, they would do well to remember that John Wooden did just fine from his hindquarters, waving a rolled-up program.

Which makes me think of the NBA's first, or at least most notorious, stand-up sideline towel-waver. I'm blaming M.L. Carr for all of this.

Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA for 25 years. You can e-mail him here.

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