View From The Other Side
Chris Webber was redlining the patience meter, but you had to look closely to see it. You had to look closely because Webber, the Public Figure, doesn’t give away much. He long ago adopted the less-is-more approach to dealing with questions surrounding a game that he and his teammates have only moments before lost.
Webber has his genuine smile and his interview smile. And so when he was asked about losing his composure in the second half of the Kings’ 117-107 playoff-opening loss to the Lakers, he flashed, very briefly, that beautiful, wry grin that the television cameras so consistently adore.
“That’s a great plan,” he replied to a suggestion that if he had held it together he might have been able to keep his team in the game. “Maybe.”
Webber paused. “Or maybe I would have kept my composure and we’d have still lost.”
Two things about that:
(1) Webber’s take is the right one. (2) It isn’t even close to being the point.
The Kings were dispatched by L.A. at Staples Center on Sunday in a game that boldly underscored most of the basic truisms of both teams’ seasons. And at the very top of that lengthy list is the essential fact that what goes for Shaquille O’Neal, in the way of body-slamming, butt-bumping, noggin-whompin’, thug-life basketball, isn’t going to play for anybody else on the floor.
Shaq will get calls, or at least get them ignored.
Chris Webber, among other people, will not.
Time to grip the cold handle of reality.
Webber fouled out of the game with 28 points and five rebounds, and the most significant number was 27, representing the limited minutes he played. He was in foul trouble from the moment he picked up his first charging call--and third personal--with 39 seconds left in the first half; and upon picking up his fifth foul with 1:14 remaining in the third quarter, again on an offensive call, his tantrum cost his team a technical and sent him to the bench.
He didn’t come back until nearly the midpoint of the final period, and exactly two game seconds later, Webber was whistled for an offensive foul against Laker guard Derek Fisher; and that was that.
Also, it’s life.
While O’Neal was sending bodies flying into the concession area while backing his enormous behind down into the lane en route to a 46-point, 17-rebound domination, Webber three times was whistled for offensive fouls, two of them against an Oscar-worthy Robert Horry.
Horry flopped brilliantly. The referees bought it twice. One of those instances was certainly plausible, the other a phantom fall.
O’Neal, meanwhile, merrily crushed people all afternoon long while taking control of the low post, and he emerged absent the scar of a single charging call.
“I think one thing,” Webber said afterward. “I think if you don’t call one charge on Shaq, how can you call a charge on me?”
How? Hide and watch. Opponents around the NBA long ago conceded the truth of this situation, and Webber and the Kings need to do the same before this entire series goes up in flames. Just because Shaq is tearing the wings off butterflies doesn’t mean Webber, or anybody else, gets to do the same.