MAINTAINING consistency in this space is paramount when weighing comparable contentious circumstances. It’s unimportant if the implicated party is Danny (The Flagrant Forward) Fortson or Shaquille (Prince Charming) O’Neal; rank and privilege and reputation cannot have any bearing on a conclusion. Just as plaintiff’s pleas are irrelevant; the evidence speaks for itself.
Unmistakably!
Any reasonable person who has viewed the tape of Rodney Stuckey getting blasted from mid-air by Shaq has identified it as a merciless foul, far beyond “excessive,” the NBA’s code word that automatically leads to ejection and, in many cases, suspension for a game or more.
League VP of Violence Stu Jackson judged otherwise, fining O’Neal 25G for abusing the refs and not leaving the court in a timely manner.
I used to pretend I got it but I don’t even pretend to get it anymore. Unreasonable decisions like that does David Stern’s unceasing crackdown on beastly brutality a disservice, as does describing such cold-blooded force as merely excessive. While football glorifies violent tackles of unprotected targets – somehow managing to shrug off a perpetual procession of paralyzed pass catchers – it is not part of the NBA’s game.
SO FAR not a single submarined player or crash dummy has broken a neck or fractured a spine.
SO FAR the depraved indifference to life and limb has yet to result in someone winding up in a motorized wheelchair for the rest of his born days.
SO FAR the “non-contact” sport has been very, very lucky in that regard; nothing is more dangerous in basketball than hitting a completely vulnerable airborne opponent and taking his legs out from under him.
Shaq went for the ball, no doubt, but it was just as clear he hit Stuckey far harder than league law or common sense allows, then followed through with both arms effectively eliminating any chance the Pistons guard may have had to regain his balance before crash-landing with a spastic splat.
“That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” Shaq, in essence, defended himself afterward, showing no remorse for stucco-ing Stuckey to the hardwood. In his mind, the foul was within the spirit of competition, powerful yet perfectly clean; he let the refs know, loud and long, what he thought of their assessment before leaving the court.
“The laws of physics state that a body in motion stays in motion,” he said inconsiderately. “And if you have two objects meet in the air, the smaller object is going to fall much harder. I’ve never been the type of player to take anyone out. I was going for the ball. He fell and added a little bit to it at the end. The referees looked at how he fell, I think.”
That silly soliloquy was Part II. Getting into the early holiday spirit, Shaq-a-Clause felt compelled to throw Phil Jackson under the sleigh when he told a Sacramento columnist his issues with Kobe Bryant were diagrammed by his former Lakers coach.
“Because if you think about it, Phil never called us into the office and said, ‘Both of you, shut the [heck] up.’ Never did that in four years. He knew that when I read something, I was going to get upset. And he knew Kobe was going to always come out and play hard.
“So I think it was all done by design.”
If the fallout of feeling so used in such a sinister scheme is three championships Terry Porter might want to start working Shaq against Steve Nash or Amare Stoudemire.
Lest we forget, the above was only part of Shaq’s productive work week that included getting docked 35-large for his manly pushing performance in the dustup with the Rockets on Wednesday night.
Shaq’s distinguished body of work in such a short amount of time and Stu Jackson’s mystifying decision have earned them co-winners of this season’s first Nobel Putz Prize.
That’ll teach Stuckey to get up in one piece.
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Poor, ahem, Mark Cuban; he couldn’t even savor his Mavericks’ OT win Sunday over the Knicks. You’d think the Securities and Exchange Commission would’ve been compassionate and waited another day before filing a pesky insider-trading lawsuit against him yesterday.
The SEC claims Cuban had confidential information on a stock sale, kept said info private while selling his 600,000 shares (of Mamma.com), and thus avoided more than $750,000 in losses.
Obviously, the SEC doesn’t closely monitor the NBA; how can Cuban be that slick when his franchise hasn’t been able to go inside for years? The trade culprits the SEC should be pursuing are Rod Thorn and Kiki Vandeweghe.
Until this mess is straightened out, Cuban plans to turn day-to-day operations of the team over to Martha Stewart.