Rasheed Wallace: From hothead to mentor

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Rasheed Wallace – Paving a way!

Rasheed “Sheed” Wallace turned 39 yesterday. The ever entertaining, hot tempered Power Forward/Center who retired from the NBA last season is currently an Assistant Coach with the Detroit Pistons.

Wallace played in the NBA for 16 solid years. He was drafted with the 4th pick by the Washington Bullets (now Washington Wizards) in 1995. He played with the Bullets, Portland Trail Blazers, Detroit Pistons, Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics before retiring from the New York Knicks. He won an NBA Championhsip with the Pistons in 2004 and was also a 4 time All-Star. Wallace’s statistics are quite decent: 14.4 PPG, 1.3 BPG, 6.7 RPG and 1 SPG. But none of these stats even begin to describe the impact Wallace had on the game.

Wallace was one of the most entertaining players in the game. He defined the word hothead with his antics on the court, be it berating the officials with expletive filled rants, yelling, poking or earning countless technical fouls (that’s just a phrase. He earned 317 technical fouls throughout his career. That’s the highest ever).

He was also known for throwing up ill advised three pointers as and when he pleased. However, one of them did land though. Wallace banked a 60 foot buzzer beater against Denver. Pistons went on to win the game 113-108.

He was pretty much always the most intense guy on the field. Wallace was known for staring at the opponent a tad too long and losing his temper more often than not. Wallace was also a good defender, not just because of his skill, but due to his physicality and his habit of taking things a little too seriously. In fact, he loved the game so much that playing and retiring from it once wasn’t enough. He did it twice by coming out of retirement to play for the Knicks, last season.

But say whatever you want, the man had heart. Wallace led the Pistons to a title in 2004 against the mighty and strongly favoured Lakers. He didn’t just lead them, he motivated them. He lifted their spirits with his locker room talks. His dedication to the team was immense. Wallace was so proud of his team when they won the championship that he gifted every single teammate of his a replica of the WWE World Heavyweight championship belts.

Wallace made one more significant contribution to basketball. It was he who popularised the phrase “Ball don’t lie”. You see, Wallace was a hard hitting player. So naturally, he got called for a lot of fouls throughout his career. However, Wallace being the hothead, used to argue with the referees a lot. After all this was over and if the player missed the freethrow, Wallace would say “Ball don’t lie”, as in, justice has been served. Quite the theatrical guy isn’t he?

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