Dirtier Targeting: Zaza Vs. "Bad Boys" Edition

[Spurtacular]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZye3q0R9xw

Parish went into this game with two very sore ankles that took him out of multiple games in the 87 ECF. Pistons knew this and were targeting him.

1:04:51 - Isiah Thomas leaves his leg out for Parish to possibly be injured. Knowing this, you can actually see the Chief take a swing at him on his way down.
1:17:57 - Bill Laimbeer pretends to be so off balance as he falls back towards Parish's leg.

There's probably more; these are the two that I've happened to catch just while casually watching some of it.

And of course you guys all remember:

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FaithfulChillyHornshark-size_restricted.gif

[Biggems]

They were all violent in the 80s, not just the Bad Boys. The Bad Boys just happened to do it to Stern's money cow.

[Spurtacular]

They were all violent in the 80s, not just the Bad Boys. The Bad Boys just happened to do it to Stern's money cow.

Pistons were probably the worst offenders; but yea, they weren't so unique.

Early 90's Knicks were even more physically dominant, tbh. Stern was making rules right and left to neutralize them for the Bulls. Stern wasn't even doing "flagrants" before that.

[dbestpro]

I hated the Pistons back in the day, but the game has gotten so soft if any team started to play that way today it would immediately become my favorite team. The Pistons basically said damn the rules we are going to play physical and dared the NBA refs to call 100 fouls per game. Imagine if Harden actually got fouled hard when they call a foul. A lot of his game would dry up.

[ZeusWillJudge]

Za Za was dirty, everywhere he played. He would have fit in with the Bad Boy Pistons very well. They institutionalized dirty play, and elevated it to an art. Their philosophy was that if they fouled often enough and hard enough, the refs couldn't possibly call everything, because it would totally fuck up the flow of the game. It worked for them back then.

[Ed Helicopter Jones]

ZaZa effectively killed the Spurs with that undercut because the team was never the same after that. If I ever meet the guy I'm going to sweep the knee.

[Spurtacular]

1:23:30 - As has been said. The dirty play was institutional.

On a routine layup, John Salley comes all the way from outside the key and sticks his foot out quite blatantly to get under Parish to re-injure the ankle.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1_WNtucO84