"When he's mad..."

Rasheed Wallace was whistled for a tech in last night's game after protesting an offensive foul he committed against Matt Bonner. This was the turning point in the contest, which featured multiple levels of embarrassing performance from the Spurs. Wallace scored 19 in the game, 17 of which came after being cited for bad manners. 9 of the 17 came on crowd-killing, momentum-gathering 3-point baskets.

Afterward, Richard Hamilton spoke to the game-changing tech: “When’s he’s mad, there is nobody in this world that can stop him.” Allen Iverson saw the same thing, “He’s always fired up but after the tech he really took matters into his own hands and that off with huge dividends for us.” The quotes from the Spurs ran in an antithetical direction. Pop remarked,

The most disturbing thing is that we were very soft. I think Detroit intimidated us. I think they ran us all over the court, with their aggressiveness and physicality. It was really sad to watch in that respect. I thought we totally folded to their aggressive play, thus the loss.

The Spurs give their fans little reason for complaint--if you can't be satisfied with this franchise then your sense of proportion suffers from a malcontented ignorance. Nevertheless, if I did register a complaint about San Antonio it would be this: I wish they had more Rasheed Wallace in them. The Need-for-Sheed, Yoda would say, is strong with this one. Aside from Pop and Ginobili, the Spurs consistently fall into complacent ruts where calm methodology utterly displaces dangerous yet still harnessed passion. They become more robot than human. Rasheed Wallace is an incredibly intelligent basketball player, but he typically errs on the side of heart before brains. He's all human, and no robot. Despite his reputation as a reckless hot-head, I'd take Rasheed Wallace on the Spurs any day.