In memoriam of Rasheed Wallace‘s illustriously insane stint as one of the most interesting professional athletes in recent memory, I’ll be profiling the top ten angriest sports figures. I will invariably miss a few, so you can berate me in the comments. These are the athletes that give children the quivers as they attempt to approach for autographs. The type of athlete that thinks about which referees they’d like to knock off first when they drive past gun stores. These are the guys that attempt to break into the officials’ locker room after an NBA Finals game seven because he ‘just wanted to talk, nothing bad’ before getting ushered to his team bus in his full uniform and a pair of sunglasses at 11 PM at night. It’s safe to say, if you roomed with these guys in summer camp you better have brought some weapons.
1. RASHEED WALLACE: This is a guy who once decided that it would be fun to assault a rookie teammate who was working on his jump shot alone by pegging him with a basketball from 100 feet, baseball style. He’s the NBA’s all-time leader in technical fouls for a career, and his 2002 season with the Portland Trailblazers featured an NBA-record 41 technical fouls which will most likely never be broken unless they someday allow velociraptors into the league. With his new-found free time he could start a brand new career as an assistant loan collector because nobody would dare hold out money on Rasheed Wallace. “Oh, you don’t want to pay us the money you’ve been owing us for six months, aye? Well you can deal with me or…RASHEED!” *Gasp* He’d have to be an assistant because there’s no way people would understand what he’s trying to say if he worked alone.
2. RON ARTEST: Four words: Malace at the Palace. That alone puts him in the top five of this list. But there’s so much more! Earlier in his career he allegedly spent half-time chugging the Hennessy he hid in his locker. He’s mellowed out a bit, but back in his Pacers/Bulls days you couldn’t go one news cycle without some story about Artest pulling out the hair of Ben Wallace or mistreating his dogs or breaking some cameras on his way to halftime because his jump shot wasn’t feeling right. Before his epic showdown with the fans of Detroit he even attempted to take a season off WITH PAY so he could promote his horrendous Tru Warier rap album. And who can forget his epic playoff series against the Lakers last year when he got Kobe to “I’d rip your face off if there weren’t cameras watching us” type levels. Artest would probably be number one on this list if it wasn’t Rasheed Wallace career tribute day. QUEENSBRIDGE! Read the rest of this entry »
