It was not our intention to play "Gotcha" with the greatest flopper the sport has ever known. We just wanted to gauge how far he’s come since his Detroit Pistons days, when he could incite a riot in a dozen ways, most of them involving melodrama — a flop, a shove, a covert elbow, a fake outrage. Chuck Daly, as he often did, put it best once: "Laimbeer," the great coach said, "could drive people insane and then just walk away — he was like Gandhi." "People disliked me because I never went away," Laimbeer corrected. "I was always there, and people couldn’t stand it. I was an irritating person to play against, and I’d get under your skin."
No one ever doubted his talent for this. Check out how many Laimbeer videos there are on YouTube, and then count how many are tagged with "fight," "flop," "cheap shot" or "hard foul." Spoiler alert: The answers are "3,700" and "more than half." And a large number involve him getting punched in the face by a 1980s wing of the Hall of Fame: Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Robert Parish, et al. Oh, and Isiah Thomas, if we’re including practices. There should be some kind of medal for that. "The Bad Boys moniker will live forever," Laimbeer said triumphantly. "You see they’re now doing a documentary on those Pistons teams? It was our identity, and we’re proud of it. But no, there’s no medal for getting punched. The real badge of honor is the championship." Newark Star-Ledger
Documentary on the Way!?!?!?!
I would consider it an honor to be punched by Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Robert Parish and Isiah Thomas
ps. I still have the Pistons VHS video's.
