Which sport has body slams, grabbing, hooking, tripping and eye-gouging?
Hint: The participants wear shorts, singlets and most of them are big and brawny.
Pro wrestling?
Ha. That’s a sissy sport compared to this one.
No, the sport we have in mind doesn’t have a springy floor to cushion the falls.
The blood is real.
And so are the stitches.
That could be nothing else but … basketball.
NBA style.
They call it basketball, anyway.
A better name for it: mayhem.
Which my handy Webster’s Dictionary defines as: The intentional mutilation of another’s body; injury inflicted on another so as to cause loss of a bodily part or function necessary for self-defense; any deliberate destruction or violence.
Yeah, any of those fit with what goes on in the NBA. Especially in the playoffs.
You watched any of the bloodletting lately?
There really hasn’t been much blood. But it’s not for a lack of trying.
I’ve seen more guys knocked woozy than in a Mike Tyson press conference.
I think it was Game 6 of the Western Conference finals when Sacramento’s Mike Bibby was guarding the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant.
Bryant started to make a move toward the basket when Bibby reached out with his arm and hooked it around the Bryant’s waist. Bryant just kept coming, flattening Bibby.
As I recall, there was no referee’s whistle.
A no-call.
But then, this is the NBA. Anything goes.
I’m not sure what constitutes a foul anymore.
I guess if a 380-pound Mound of Groundround stomps you into the floor, leaving you looking like Wile E. Coyote after being squashed by a boulder, that might qualify. Though if the mound is named Shaquille O’Neal, he has a good chance of getting off scott-free.
O’Neal complains about the abuse he takes. And he takes considerable. He’s got guys leaning on him, grabbing him, pushing him, elbowing him. But he hands it out, too. If the refs called every foul he commits, he’d be out of the game after a quarter.
But he isn’t the only one who gets away with stuff. If every foul was called, there wouldn’t be anybody left to play by halftime.
This is what the NBA has come to.
It isn’t what Dr. James Naismith had in mind when he invented basketball.
It’s supposed to be a finesse game, not a game of bodies banging, hands grappling, elbows swinging, heads butting. It’s become more like a bar room brawl than a game of cunning and balletic moves.
If we wanted to see fighting, we’d go to an Oakland Raiders game.
But the rough stuff is only part of the ugliness that’s overtaken the sport.
You watch the players in the NBA today, and none of them is ever guilty of breaking a rule. They plead their case with great theatrical flair every time they get called for a foul or a violation of any sort.
Of course, there are two things they never get punished for: palming the ball (which every guard in the NBA is guilty of, with the exception of John Stockton) and walking with the ball (which Michael Jordan made legal).
Oh, there is one other, but it applies only to Karl Malone: shooting a free throw within 10 seconds.
After three rounds of the NBA playoffs, the last two teams standing are the Los Angeles Lakers and the New Jersey Nets.
May the better team win – on a knockout or a last-second basket.
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