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Long-term effects Wallace's emotion hurts Blazers in many ways
Posted: Wednesday April 05, 2000 01:39 PM
By breaking the season record for technicals in getting his 33rd and 34th of the season on Sunday, Portland's Rasheed Wallace is only hurting himself. As a coach, I probably had the most technicals of any coach ever, and I know that you really do hurt yourself. Officials are human beings, and they will retaliate. Wallace is not going to get a close call. I'm sure head coach Mike Dunleavy has talked to him about it a million times: If you want to get the calls, you've got to be a little bit more friendly with the officials. You're hurting your team, not only by getting tossed out of a game and getting a technical, but also by the calls you're not going to get. That's going to become an even bigger problem for the Blazers in the postseason. While Wallace may say he can tone it down in the playoffs, it doesn't matter because the damage is already done. He's created an atmosphere that's really hurting his career. The officials know when they go into a game - he's a marked guy.
Bryant-Childs fight isn't a big deal . . . yetIf you really look at the altercation between Chris Childs and Kobe Bryant on Sunday, it wasn't anything major. I think Childs was shocked by an unintentional elbow from Kobe in the pick on the baseline. They started jawing and shoving, and Childs is not a player who backs down. Kobe didn't look like he wanted to back down, either. But I think Kobe thought it was just going to be a conversation, and, all of a sudden, Childs let go with a couple of punches and Kobe was totally shocked.
It looked to me as if Childs was disappointed that it happened. When guys have the intention of getting into fisticuffs, they're very excited afterward, and Childs was really subdued and down. But any time anybody takes a punch at somebody in the game of basketball, they have to retaliate. You can't walk away. Anybody who's competitive at all is going to retaliate. The difference between now and when I played the game is that we had only nine teams, so you played the same teams seven or eight times a year. You never forgot a situation like that one, because you played a couple of days later and you had a chance to retaliate. But now they play only two or four times, so you don't see the players again. But if the Knicks and Lakers meet again in the Finals and play seven games, it could still be there. They won't forget about it.
Coach's breakdownOrlando's win over San Antonio on Tuesday didn't surprise me at all. The Magic's talent is a little better than people had talked about, and they're very athletic. That athleticism won out over the size of the Spurs, but if they had to play a playoff series, I think San Antonio would win.In fact, the only possible team that can beat the Lakers in the playoffs is San Antonio, because of their size. They have two big people in David Robinson and Tim Duncan, who can give a little grief to Shaquille O'Neal. Those two guys could even play Shaq straight up without having to give up anything. I haven't seen a team this year that could beat the Lakers in a playoff series, but the Spurs would give it the best shot. Kevin Loughery is a former NBA player and head coach. He appears each Sunday on CNN/Sports Illustrated's "This Week in the NBA."
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