Completely wrong

The suspensions are wrong.
I don’t care what anyone says, 6 games for damn near taking Ron Artest’s head off after a ticky-tacky foul (I defy you to watch it and tell me it was a “hard” foul) is not nearly enough for Ben Wallace. If anyone is out for the entire season, it ought to be Ben “Thuggy” Wallace. (And they should make him get a haircut before he comes back.) This is the guy who had the gall to say that if Detroit were up 15 with 45 seconds to play, he wouldn’t foul a guy going up for a layup. I have two words for that: Bull. Shit.
Someone made the comment the other day that if someone came up to you on the street and did to you what Wallace did to Artest, it would be assault and any response to it you made would be self-defense.
There’s no question now that the NBA and David Stern have it in for the Pacers. Nobody cared when the Pacers were shit. Now they have a chance for a title and the NBA will do anything it can to keep them from getting it. I had to laugh last night when the Pacers’ third string, two of whom played the whole game and three of whom played about 42 minutes apiece, almost took a game from Grant Hill and the Orlando Magic (who undoubtedly walked into Conseco thinking a mediocre performance was all they needed for the win). Bwah. Ha. Ha.
Unlike Jeff, I’m a Pacers fan (came to it late in life thanks to my wife). I probably wouldn’t be a Pacers fan if I wasn’t acquainted with most of the players (also thanks to my wife, who used to be their cell phone witch). The Pacers actually have a stable of predominantly good men who play ball for them. The problem is, if you don’t know them and talk to them, you never see that side of them.
We ran into Jermaine O’Neal a week ago tonight at Target. He and Sally had a fairly long chat. He could have walked away at “Hi Jermaine”, but he hung around because he knows Sally. We’ve run into Ron Artest up there before as well, and he’s always got a moment to talk even though he’s got his family with him. In person they’re not the people you see on the trash-talking the other teams on the screen.
If you’re not a fan, it undoubtedly seems simple to say the NBA is to basketball what the WWE is to wrestling. I used to say that the NBA wasn’t really basketball myself. But when you know what goes on behind the scenes, it’s much more complex than that.