The Alice at the Palace represents some big-league brutality. It was so furious that even a large man found himself overmatched. Rick Mahorn, an assistant coach for the Detroit side, tried to intervene before the mess got out of hand and instead shoved the Sparks’ Lisa Leslie to the floor. When a WNBA player gets pushed to the hardwood by a notorious member of the Bad Boys, it shouldn’t be taken as a lack of chivalry but rather an indication that the sport has finally arrived.

Mahorn’s act didn’t seem intentional, anyway. But when factored into the whole maelstrom of sugar and spice and everything nice gone sour, the unfortunate incident does have a bright side. It raises the sport’s profile, and indeed, lifts all women’s sports onto the main stage.

For too long, meat-headed men have dominated the sports world with their high levels of testosterone and low levels of brain activity. Whether it be a bench-clearing brawl between two baseball teams after a brushback pitch, or bloody hockey mayhem between groups of toothless neanderthals, or even some off-the-field manifestation of pent-up anger like a Pacman Jones bar fight, the clear leaders of senseless conflict have always been men in sports. When was the last time you saw soccer hooligans with makeup and earrings?

But now, thanks to this recent spate of female trouble, the landscape has been altered. The next time Michelle Wie fails to put her signature on her scorecard, she just might grab the official scorekeeper by the throat and say, “Here’s my signature.”Maybe the next time Venus and Serena Williams play each other in a tournament final, all their repressed sister-against-sister antipathy might show itself in a spirited racquet swordfight.

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And while neither Cynthia Rodriguez nor Madonna is a professional athlete, they are immersed in a steamy cauldron of female vitriol over somebody who is, and that in itself is reason to wonder if perhaps their white-hot rancor for each other might someday be captured in a public place on video.

No, being ladylike in sports certainly isn’t what it used to be.

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