Sedale Threatt wrote:GREY 1769 wrote:Sedale Threatt wrote:
If I could murder one person and get away with it, Bill Laimbeer would get strong, strong consideration. I'm not even sure Robert Parish got suspended for beating his ass.
No foul called, no tech, no ejection!
Even the refs were like,
Finally somebody laid his ass out! Parish did get suspended one game, fined $7500. Bird: "For doing that good deed?"
...
Laimbeer: "I don't fight. I agitate then walk away." Tells you all you need to know about him in one **** sentence. **** gutless arrogant ahole.
This is also the Morris sneaky cheapshot
who? what, me?! blueprint.
Laimbeer to me has top-three, likely top, most punchable face spot of all time. Morrises are making their way up the list.
It's hard to describe just how much I hated, and probably still do to a large degree, Bill Laimbeer. He was an excellent player, no question. The Pistons couldn't have won championships without him. But that whole style of play of agitating to provoke a response and delivering cheap shots and flopping is just so unbelievably chickensht to me. But I guess sports is all about identifying inefficiencies and exploiting them, and figuring out you could do that with minimal repercussions was part of it. Hence the flagrant foul. The fact they lost a ring to a phantom foul on Laimbeer is the definition of cosmic justice.
You mean when he fouled out in '88? Yeah well it was a bad call but there are small truths and there are bigger truths; the smaller truth is that it was a phantom call but the bigger truth is that Laimbeer's tactics caught up with him. For all the bad non-calls that weren't but should have been made, they accumulated into this one bad phantom call. Purists, and I'm mostly one of them, would say each call has to be made fairly in its own context without outside influence. But every now and again, it seems basketball gods open a door and whisper justice in. It's unfair but fair...
Agree with everything you said about Laimbeer.
Also, the year prior it made
the steal have that much more import beyond the great on-court play itself: that Bird was the one who stole it, that he did it off of the intended receiver Laimbeer, that he passed with Laimbeer on him, that it was scored on Laimbeer's face, that it decided the outcome of the game after everything Laimbeer did in the series was the most epically satisfying poetic justice. I was so happy I cried
And then the Cs won the series. It still fills me with a deep warm satisfying joy.
