Zach Randolph Suspended Two Games

As expected, the NBA announced today that Zach Randolph will be suspended for throwing a punch at the Suns' Lou Amundson during Tuesday night's 40-point loss to the Suns. What was unexpected, however, was how light the sentence was.

The league handed down only a two-game suspension for the incident, which (as you may recall) had Randolph first knocking down Amundson, then when Amundson got up to tell him it wasn't appreciated, Zach punched him in the face.

It was totally uncalled for, and Randolph wasn't even remorseful about it afterwards. He "joked" that if he had used his fist instead of the open hand, things would have been much worse.

"Yeah, open hand. If I would have hit him he wouldn't have got up off the ground," Randolph said.

Hilarious. Still, the two-game suspension seems extremely weak considering what happened.

Earlier this season, the Suns were involved in a shoving match with the Houston Rockets, that involved multiple players getting suspended. Phoenix's Matt Barnes started the incident by throwing a forearm to the chest of Rafer Alston, but he was fighting through a screen when it happened, and while it might have been excessive, it did happen in the course of the game. Sure, Alston escalated things by running up to Barnes and getting in his face afterwards, and several players from both teams ended up having to be separated.

But outside of Barnes' shot that he gave to fight through the screen, not a single punch was thrown.

Randolph's actions were far worse than those of Barnes, yet the each received identical two-game suspensions. Had the Suns retaliated or had other players come running in to further escalate the situation, I'm guessing we would have seen the type of punishment that a dead-ball punch to the face deserves, something more in the neighborhood of five to ten games.

Oh, and speaking of Barnes, he may have had the best line of all after the game, which possibly could have explained the lack of Suns coming to their teammate's defense.

"Zach's crazy," Barnes said.