Commissioner David Stern sends wrong signal with punishment of Celtics' Paul Pierce

Take that cash and earmark it for the L.A. park Pierce has helped rescue from gangs. Or for the construction of a Boys and Girls Club in Inglewood that he's helping build. Or for the surgical wing that has the All-Star forward's name on it because he has given so much.

It's an odd mix, Pierce caught up in Stern's drive for a post-Auburn Hills, NBA image makeover. So far as we can tell, the Celtics' vet is one of the game's good guys. He has never given up on the place where he is from. In his case, that place is Los Angeles, South L.A. and Inglewood to be exact, particularly the sprawl of good neighborhoods held hostage by violent knuckleheads.

Paul Pierce?

I'm neither convinced Stern's punishment was fair nor meted out smartly, and not convinced he made an example of the right guy.

Make no mistake, I'm on board with the commissioner's intent. He's trying to steer his league's image as far from the pathologies of urban America as possible. When it comes to gangs, he should. In the inner city, the gang problem is a disease, an epidemic, a nearly intractable public health crisis that is steadily eliminating a significant swath of our society.

Call me old fashioned, but I've got no problem with Stern demanding that NBA players start dressing more like executives and less like rappers, no problem with him cracking down on macho, taunting hand signs.

Our kids look up to these guys as if they were gods, watching and mimicking every move they make. For the kids who come from stable homes and safe neighborhoods, mimicking the dress and the "menacing gestures" Stern so dislikes is innocuous. A harmless placebo.

But for others, for the kids who live among chaos and numbing poverty, mimicking those moves and that dress can be a poison pill. It can literally lead to death.

This is no game. Image -- including dress and posturing -- means much. It's a part of culture. If we can begin changing a culture that contributes to a fatal disease, NBA, have at it.

Yet I also think Paul Pierce was wronged.

If I'm his advisor, or if I've got the ear of any NBA player who tosses up signs that in any way can be construed as those a hoodlum would flash, I'd certainly make a two-word demand: can it.