A moral question

[Taiwan Killa]

Should NBA players purposely go after another player's injury? And by that I mean if they see someone with a knee brace who just recovered should they purposely body them up and drive into them or if you have someone with an injured finger should you hack at it and be rough with it?

Bruce Bowen comes to mind when I think of this. Lamar Odom once said that he would rather wait a couple more games and play without a knee brace because if players saw that they would go after it. James Worthy asked whether other players in the playoffs would try to reinjure Kobe's pinky and he said no doubt about it.

Do you guys think this is an immoral practice by NBA players? Or is all fair in love and basketball? Should the refs watch people guarding Kobe closely and other injured players in the playoffs or Wade last year with his shoulder? What do you guys think?

[og15]

I don't think that is morality, that is more about sportsmanship. It would be bad sportsmanship, not immoral, I don't see a correlation to morality here.

[hermes]

i don't know if this pertains to morality or not
but its kind of like kicking a guy when he's down

[Serpo]

Going purposly after an injured player to hurt him is the cheapest you can do .

[xAIRNESSx]

My opinion is that if you have to resort to something like that, you aren't confident in your game.

[RobertGlory]

if you can go after an injury in the normal context of basketball, more power to you.

[Buckeye-NBAFan]

My opinion is that if you have to resort to something like that, you aren't confident in your game.

I'd be a lot more confident in my game if I just took Kobe out of the game due to an injury.

[Turkey Dance]

It would be terrible to do that, but you know there's always at least one person dumb enough to try something like that.

[ElectricMayhem]

To try to reinjure a player is horrible, but to take advantage of their injury is only common sense. If a player has a hurt knee then drive on him more.

There's nothing wrong with playing to a player's weakness. If I've got a 7 footer guarding me, I'm not going to try to back him down or shoot over him, I'm going to try to run past him. If the guy guarding me has shoulder problems, I'm going to try to back him down and go inside on him.

If you're healthy enough to be on the court then you should expect to have your weaknesses/injuries exploited.

[Rasheeed!!!]

There's nothing wrong with going at an injured guy. If he has a gimpy leg your going to attack his weakness, if he has an abdominal strain your going to see if he's willing to bang in the paint or take a charge.

As long as there are no intentions to injure someone then it's all good in my mind. Injured players should be on the bench, not the court.

[SOUL]

You go after an injured guy to score, not to re-injure. And if he's that bad he shouldn't be on the court in the first place.

[durden_tyler]

Well, it's part of the risk the (previously) injured players would have to take. i mean, how do we really know one guy fouled the other guy intentionally when it could happen in a real game? We go by his reputation, right? And even that is being prejudiced.

As for the other perspective, you'd think that it's bad for a coach to instruct one of his players to body up one certain opponent who is off say a certain injury? Isn't that good strategy, getting into that players mind with the intentional (specific) physical play...?

In my mind, it's the injured players risk, if they get hurt it is THEIR fault.