Renee Brown and Donna Orender will earn their money in the next day or so.

The last thing the WNBA big wigs like Orender and Brown want is a scene like the one that played out on national television at the end of Tuesday's Los Angeles/Detroit game.

In case you missed it, LA's prized rookie Candace Parker got her feathers ruffled after she was roughed up a bit after grabbing a defensive rebound late in her team's win over the Eastern Conference leading Shock. If not for teammate Lisa Leslie stepping in and getting Parker to chill out, things could have gotten ugly. Unfortunately for Parker, Leslie was not able to help her out when Parker got tangled with Detroit's Plenette Pierson later in the game. Pierson locked onto Parker on a box out and wouldn't let go as Parker attempted to run down the floor so Parker threw Pierson to the ground. As Parker made her way down the court, Pierson began to get up and collided with Parker. What followed was not pretty. From Parker and Pierson needing to be separated by teammates, Detroit's Cheryl Ford appearing to reinjure her knee while attempting to restrain Pierson, Hartford native and Detroit assistant coach Rick Mahorn pushing Leslie to the floor and Delisha Milton-Jones responding with a punch to the back of Mahorn's head.

Tomorrow Brown and Orender figure to be breaking down the tape and levying penalties on the guilty parties. With Los Angeles' next game at Connecticut on Thursday, it will be interesting to see just who will be suiting up for the Sparks. Something tells me that Parker's first game in the state of the Connecticut since leading Tennessee to a 70-64 win over UConn at the Hartford Civic Center on Jan. 6, 2007 will be spent in street clothes as she begins to serve a suspension. Then again, with the way the league has marketed Parker and made it seem like the league wasn't born until Parker entered the WNBA, it is possible that Orender gives a Parker one of her "boy, I really wish you wouldn't do that" talks she gave technical foul happy ex-UConn star Diana Taurasi earlier this season after a game at Mohegan Sun Arena to let Parker off with just a "stern" lecture.

Regardless of the penalty Parker receives, don't be surprised to see a less than cordial response from the Connecticut Sun faithful Thursday night for the ex-Tennessee star.

A side note, my sister who lives in Michigan was in attendance at the game. She has pretty good seats and probably had a great view of the whole mess. I e-mailed her shortly after the game was over and am curious to see what her first-hand take on that fiasco was.

As pathetic a scene as the melee was, it was not the saddest turn of events I heard about today. This morning I received word that former UConn women's basketball beat writers Bruce Berlet, Jeff Goldberg and Dave Heuschkel were caught up in the bean counter's plan to shrink the newsroom personnel at the Hartford Courant. Berlet and Goldberg opted to accept buyouts while Heuschkel was laid off. A total of nine people either were bought out or laid off by the Courant. Among the others let go was my former boss Paul Rosano and the commissioner of the only fantasy baseball league I ever belonged to. A former sports editor at the Register, Paul had the unenviable and some may say impossible task of replacing the late Bo Kolinsky as the Courant's high school editor.