There is a time and place for everything. Tonight is the time, and the Garden is the place. It is time for Dwight Howard to be Rambis-ed.
Boston may be on the East Coast, but the time has come for the Celtics [team stats] to employ some frontier justice on the Orlando center after two straight games in which he has felt free to decapitate one guy after another. He tossed Paul Pierce [stats] to the floor by his face on one occasion, rapped Kevin Garnett in the forehead with an elbow one time and gave him a face rub on another, and knocked two teeth and all the sense out of Glen Davis’ face in Game 5 on Wednesday night.
And those were just the felonious assaults. Never mind the misdemeanors; that rap sheet is longer than Howard’s inseam.
Frankly, the time for taking hits is over. It’s time to deliver a few. In the last two games Howard has taken the idea of physical play a bridge too far, and there is only one way to respond: Rearrange his bridge work.
The NBA has three officials on hand to police such things, but they haven’t. They seem more preoccupied with blowing whistles for jaw boning than jaw rearrangement.
Since the officials have decided to leave it up to the players then it is time for the Rambis-ing of Howard. All Celtics fans remember Game 4 of the 1984 NBA Finals when Kevin McHale took down Kurt Rambis on a breakaway as if he was in the calf-roping compe ion at the National Finals Rodeo. Rambis got up spoiling for a fight but his team didn’t, and what had once seemed like a Lakers blowout turned out to be a Celtics victory. They tied the series at 2 and ended up winning it in seven games.
At the time, Cedric Maxwell explained what resulted when he said, “Before Kevin McHale hit Kurt Rambis, the Lakers were just running across the street whenever they wanted. Now they stop at the corner, push the button, wait for the light and look both ways.”
Now it’s Howard’s turn to learn physical play is a two-way street. It’s time for him to eat some bloody chicklets.
And he brought it on himself. Not by scoring and rebounding. Not by pushing and shoving. But by acting as if he has carte blanche to hurt people in the guise of “playing hard."
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