Basketball is still a physical, contact sport. I learned that lesson when I was a shorty playing hoops at the local gym on campus(MIZZOU). Our all Big 8 PF Malcomn Thomas was cutting to the goal. Malcomn was 6'8" 200 plus. I was barely 6'0" and about 160lbs soaking wet. I beat Malcomn to the spot in front of the rim. He calmly took the his arm, placed it on my birdchest, and sent me flying 20ft onto the track that surrounded the courts. I landed on my back, barely missed smacking my head on the track, and my toes almost touched the ground behind my head. As I sat up to collect myself, I had to double-roll to the right as the ball Malcomn just dunked through the goal almost hit me. Lesson: When someone goes to the goal with a nasty dunk, get the hell outta the way or else you might catch something. An elbow, knee in the grill, glass shattering(aka Chocolate Thunder), something. Least of all, why get caught in the poster? Byron Chamberlain(TE-Vikings) juggled his nuts in my boy Barry's mouth on a nasty dunk in the same gym and two decades later we are still talking about it. Just get the hell outta the way and live to fight another day.
All that being said this will give the lily-white media a chance to call artest an animal again and talk about how "this has no place in basketball." Hello, elbows are a part of basketball. Anybody who has played a pickup game knows this. How soon the white media forgets how "Bad Boy" Bill Laimbeer used to just haul off and slug people. But that was just "being a competitor." Whatever. Now some police captain here in Chicago is talking about Taurez hit on Hossa being "borderline criminal." Stay on your beat Captain. Hockey is a contact sport as well. And yes, I just played the race card. We are allowed to do that on KO.COM from time to time.