In 2002, Rasheed Wallace hosted a hip-hop show on Portland’s sadly defunct Jammin’ 95.5. I remember listening to it, but I can remember precisely nothing about it. I had hoped to find episodes online, but then I remembered that YouTube didn’t exist in 2002, and local radio shows hosted by NBA players in small markets aren’t the kind of thing people were compelled to record and save back then.

What I did find, though, amounts to a mini-treasure trove of Sheed bars. To begin with, his taste is unimpeachable. He probably doesn’t own 14 copies of Take Care like Brandon Jennings does. He’s more of a Wu-Tang guy, as this SportsCenter clip shows. They call it a freestyle, but it’s actually Nas’ (phenomenal) verse on “Verbal Intercourse,” a track from Raekwon’s peerless Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. (Note: This one is fine since it’s from an ESPN broadcast, but the rest of this videos in this post can safely be classified as “NSFW.”)

Next up is “P.H.I.L.L.Y.,” from a group called 100X. Sheed’s is the third verse. As you might expect, he mixes some hoops rhymes in with repping his hometown of Philadelphia. For an NBA player, he’s a more than respectable rapper:

I have no idea where this freestyle comes from or when it was recorded, but it’s mostly notable for clearing things up for those who confuse him with Joe Budden, which is obviously a common mistake that needed to be addressed.

This last one might contain subtle drug references, something nobody would ever expect from Sheed. I don’t know when this freestyle was recorded, but it had to be post-retirement. Any active player dropping bars like “In my right hand a drink, in the left is a J” would probably get fined. On the other hand, would that stop Sheed? He’d likely just CTC and act like it never happened.

Photo from sarnil via Flickr

We’re taught this from the moment we can understand personality traits: arrogance is bad. It doesn’t matter who we are and what we do, we must do so graciously. We must all be humble and fair, treating those lesser mortals with benevolent sympathy. You know the drill.

Of course, professional athletes work on a totally different plane. While our natural inclination against the despicable habit of worshiping he who is in the mirror still lurks, we simultaneously recognize that superhumans are allowed to think of themselves as superhamans, thus driving us into an ambiguous and confused zone. We want to allow these players what we can’t allow, and it leaves us scattering for subliminal excuses.

Perhaps it’s the knowledge that all of them – even Brian Cardinal – have incredibly-high opinions of themselves. Perhaps it’s because they are the tall muscular vessels through which we try to live our own lives that we allow them to express feelings we have forbidden ourselves from even approaching. Sometimes we’re aware of the situation, but all we ask for is the effort – a Kevin Durant “I just want to win” quote or Dirk Nowitzki admitting through tears that he doesn’t deserve Finals MVP.

Other times we allow ourselves to revel in the athlete’s ostentatious act of self-grandeur – but only if we decide they’ve earned it. As Kobe Bryant attempts to defy an aging process that is by all accounts undefeatable, we cheer every 40 point game and unlikely turnaround, promoting human spirit, and ignoring hubris, in the name of greatness or awe or RINGZZ. Meanwhile, Jordan Crawford is rightfully chided for his ridiculous if understandable quest to be the greatest ever. Both are employing virtually the same mind-set, but Kobe has earned the right to underbite the notion in our face, while Jordan Crawford would be best served by establishing an actual culture of anything before taking a break from chucking contested 20 footers to tell us how great he is.

But every now and then, we encounter that special fellow who we just can’t place. Somewhere between Monta Ellis claiming he’s the 2^nd best player alive and Michael Jordan endearing the world with a speech the equivalent of building a spaceship from the debris of his fallen enemies and naming it after himself, between the two poles of a “Derrick Rose yay, LeBron James nay!” culture, there lies a realm of arrogance that we just don’t know how to cope with.

The Realm of Sheed.

Rasheed Wallace made an entire career out of toeing the line of the acceptable. His feelings about himself were well-deserved given the gifts that were bestowed upon his 7 foot, grey-spotted frame, but at the same time, they probably prevented his fully-realized pantheon-level ascension. They brought us disinterested three pointers to go with vicious defense; they produced victorious bellows and disgruntled sighs; they brought a championship ring to Detroit, but fell short of supplying who-knows-how-many-more to whoever’s jersey Sheed had been donning in a given season.

His natural talent was virtually unmatched, and its development virtually coincidental. His temper (and, let’s face it, his reputation) led him to set an all-time technical foul record that is probably the most unmatchable record of all time – we’ll see dozens of 100 point games before an NBA player gets various referees to angrily blow their whistle 41 times in a season again. And the entire concept of Guaransheed – promising a victory before the game because, well, you’re Rasheed Wallace and you can – would have three underlines and 5 frowny faces on the clipboards of coaches in every sport at every level.

He did this…

… and said this…

Wallace tried to claim that he called the bank shot, but was drowned out by the jeers of his teammates.”OK, Im lying about that,” he said with a laugh. “But Ill take it either way.”

via Denver Nuggets vs. Detroit Pistons – Recap – March 26, 2007 – ESPN.

… and everybody loved it. Because it’s him. It’s Sheed. Heck, Guaransheed has its own Urban Dictionary page… and it’s not even the only Sheed- inspired entry. How morally terrible can such an endeavor truly be?

We’ve had plenty of unique human beings race through the NBA at various points in time. Sheed’s was such a unique kind of uniqueness that even if I use the word unique for the 3^rd time in a single sentence, it won’t cut it. He was a mesmerizing study in the art of human beings, so skilled at blurring the fine line between “that’s not playing nice, kids” and “SWAG, SWAG, SO MUCH SWAG” that regardless of where your vote fell in his rambunctious zero-sum game of mixed feelings , you had no choice but to plead your case at the top of your lungs.

Just like he would. Whether it’s with a ref, on a dreary Tuesday night in March in Charlotte after a comeback attempt we all wanted and didn’t want, or if it’s deep into retirement, with a poor supermarket vendor who insists they’re all out of yams, Sheed had and has only one gear: all-out, but everything held back. We still don’t know what to do with it.

As a Cavs fan, I will always have one distinct memory of Rasheed Wallace that I don’t intend on forgetting anytime soon. In 2006, at a Sunday practice following a Game 3 loss to the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, Rasheed made one of his famous “Guaransheeds” saying, “We’re going to bust their [butt]. Tomorrow night is the last game here in this building for this year.” Final score in Game 4? Cavs 74 Pistons 72. It was the first time he did not fulfill his prediction. Wallace would get the last laugh though after the Cavs, while holding a 3-2 series lead, proceeded to lose Games 6 and 7. Detroit was headed for their fourth consecutive Eastern Conference Finals appearance, and the Cavs experienced their first playoff series loss in the LeBron Era.

Fast forward to June 2, 2007. The Cavs were coming off LeBron’s incredible Game 5 performance, forever dubbed the 48 Special, and looking for their first NBA Finals appearance in franchise history. Midway through the 4^th quarter, with the Cavs holding a 12 point lead, it happened. First, Rasheed committed an offensive foul by backing down Anderson Varejao. As he headed back down the court, he began yelling at the refs. Everyone in the arena knew it was only a matter of time before Rasheed completely melted down. The frustration of the game and series had grown on him.  Sure enough, on the ensuing Cavs possession, LeBron drove the lane, dished the ball to Varejao underneath, and Rasheed promptly tackled LeBron to the ground. Fifth foul? Check. First technical foul? Check. Would he go for the second technical foul? You bet. Rasheed Wallace had been ejected. Even if the Pistons had pulled off a stunning comeback, the fact that it was Wallace’s seventh technical of the playoffs meant he would not be playing in Game 7 either. It was at this exact moment that I knew the Cavs would represent that Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. It was a moment that I would never forget.

Looking back on his career, Rasheed’s temper was a pleasure to watch; he was like Lou Pinella in that respect. For the same reasons that people tune in night after night hoping to see something they’ve never seen before (an impossible buzzer beater, a historic shooting night, the Wizards winning a game, etc.), every time you bought a ticket to a game, you knew that there was the potential for Rasheed to completely lose his mind. Sometimes it was entertaining. Other times it was terrifying. At the end of the day though, as long as you weren’t a fan of the team Rasheed was on, it was a spectacle to behold. At its core, sports is entertainment, and few people had the potential to entertain a crowd as much as Rasheed. Whether it getting insanely hot and dropping 42 points against the Nuggets on a cold February night in 2001, doing whatever he did to rack up an incredible 304 technical fouls in his career, or lazily coasting through the 2009-2010 season with the Celtics, Wallace drove fans of all teams practically insane. I have no idea if he will actually unretire and bless another fan base with his presence in the next couple of months. Would I like to see him come back this season? Of course! Would I like to see him join the Cavs? Of course not! We’ll always have 2007 though, and that is something that I will never forget.

Photo by Moondog Mascot via Flickr

It’s impossible to talk about Rasheed Wallace without discussing the elephant in the room. Wallace holds the record for technical fouls in a career at 304, and one gets the feeling it’s not a record he’s against holding. After all, he once got called for 41 technicals in one season, and he knew exactly what he was doing. Wallace played with emotion and passion, but often he was unable to keep that fire under wraps. As a result, he fired shots against referees like he was in a war; in 2002-03, he received a seven-game suspension for threatening Tim Donaghy on a loading dock after the game.

While fans often appreciate that kind of energy and vigor, there’s no argument that it was detrimental to Wallace’s teams. He seemed to recognize it to some extent as well; when the league instituted a policy of suspending players after their 16th technical foul during the regular season (and again after every other additional technical), Wallace drastically cut down on his antics and was whistled for far fewer techs. Even with that newly found awareness of his surroundings, though, the plethora of technical fouls, ejections and suspensions did non-negligible damage.

How much damage? A precise answer would be incredibly difficult to nail down without parsing every game log for free throws made/missed, the time at which Wallace was ejected from a given game and countless other factors that are beyond the scope of this study. However, I did want to come up with some sort of estimate, so I took the technical foul and ejection data available on ESPN going back to the 1999-00 season, as well as Wallace’s suspension history, and made some basic assumptions:

First, for the sake of this experiment, I assumed that technical free throw attempts are successful 85% of the time. Average FT% for guards over the past few seasons is slightly above 80%; I bumped it up to 85% under the assumption that the better-shooting players who take the majority of free throws make them at a slightly higher rate. Multiplying that success rate times the number of technical fouls called on Wallace gives a simple estimate of the points his team gave up as a result.

Second, I calculated Sheed’s average Win Shares per game by multiplying his WS/48 times the minutes per game he averaged in a given season. That number served as the basis for several calculations – total Win Shares lost (WS/G times ejections* and suspensions) and Win Shares lost vs. a marginal player (the difference between Sheed’s total WS lost and the WS lost if a replacement-level player of .100 WS/48 played his minutes per game for the duration of the games he missed).

*This was the first majorly problematic assumption; it’s nearly impossible to determine how much time Wallace lost per game based on when he was ejected. For simplicity’s sake, I calculated these numbers as if Sheed had missed the entire game, which obviously inflates the negative impact. Feel free to multiply those numbers times whatever coefficient you think is appropriate for time lost – I considered making the assumption that the ejections, on average, came halfway through the game, which would naturally cut the lost WS numbers in half.

Lastly, I took the average points off of technical free throws per season and put them through a Pythagorean winning percentage calculation, where the base was a .500 team scoring and allowing 7800 points per season. The result was taking a 41-win team down to 40.3 wins, on average.

The results of all that tabulation? This magnificent chart!

An average of almost 23 technical fouls  - even after Wallace limited his transgressions – 2 ejections and almost a game suspended per season. Those technicals also cost his teams almost 20 points per season, which came outside of the flow of the game and artificially inflated defensive efficiency numbers.

Those numbers aren’t exceptionally high; they don’t jump off the page and scream how much damage Wallace did by refusing to temper his emotions. They only include 80% of the technicals called on Sheed during his career, however, and they are rather striking to me. Wallace cost himself an estimated 3.5 Win Shares over the course of his career simply by acting out; that number represents over 3% of Wallace’s total contribution in the NBA as measured by career WS. And while losing a tenth of a WS per season relative to a replacement-level player isn’t horrible, combining that with the impact of the free points the opposition received from the charity stripe translates into almost a full loss per season for Wallace’s teams which can be directly attributed to his tantrums.

Think about that for a second. A loss here and a loss there might not seem like much, but when that win or loss is completely at the discretion of one of a team’s best players, one can’t help but be agitated at the very least. Does it mean much in the grand scheme of things? Probably not; it’s merely indicative of how much each little thing, even a seemingly minor altercation with a referee, can impact the final result. Wallace was a fine player, with a basketball IQ that coaches and teammates raved about. Unfortunately, he didn’t always act as intelligently as he should have and impacted his teams in negative ways for over a decade. By goading refs, disagreeing with calls and generally acting like a malcontent, Wallace let his attitude cost his team a game per season.

Let’s not even talk about how much money he lost; that’s a discussion for another day and another blog.

Although Character X was already dead, he had an infection inside him that, if left alone, would blossom and make Character X a potentially dangerous force.

You cannot heal this infection, Character A explained. You cannot treat it with medication. You can only kill Character X.

Character B disagreed. Character X was his friend. He couldn’t kill him. He had to roll the dice and hope Character A was wrong.

I am not wrong, Character A said simply. We are endangering everyone’s lives by letting Character X live.

And I was watching this thinking, “My God, Character X is Rasheed Wallace! We let him live, and now he’s destroying everyone on the island! Why didn’t we take him out in time? WHY DIDN’T WE TAKE HIM OUT IN TIME????????”

-Bill Simmons, on Sheed’s destructive and slow infection of the Celtics. Also, some stuff about LOST.

Another day, another up-close glimpse at a Wizards loss. Now, I’m not saying that any particular person brought in some sort of infectious losing culture to the team. I’m just saying that the team has a losing culture that’s hard to kick. It can be kicked, and I believe it will be kicked. Maybe not anytime soon, but in due time. There are some good pieces on this team, solid defensive and offensive pieces that will serve as this team’s core going forward. Then there are other parts of this team that make little sense, parts that make you wonder what the point of a playbook is if plays keep breaking. I think, though, the reason the Wizards are so perplexing is that sometimes both of those parts come from the same players. Flashes of brilliance. Abject incompetence. Basket-to-basket energy. Jog-jog-jog-delayed hand in the air. Fast break basket to get your team back in the game. Patting yourself on the back before you get there.

We have some players that look for highlights instead of substance.

-Flip Saunders, anti-showboating advocate

To McGee’s credit, maybe he only made his highlight to neutralize Chandler Parsons’s highlight (via @Truth_About_It):

Oof. They’ll get there. They will. They have to, right? Right?

Someone should tell Sheed that training camp isn't in Jakarta this year. (pic via me on my camera)

Welcome to Sheed Week, folks! And Happy Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior day, too! These men have very little in common, so there’s no use in comparing them. But let’s go ahead and list a bunch of random trivia about them, shall we?

Lots of games today, so let’s dive right in.

Orlando Magic @ New York Knickerbockers (1pm EST)
In his rookie year, Sheed broke his thumb against the Magic and was sidelined for the rest of the season. Dr. King’s most inspiring speech against the Vietnam War was delivered on April 4, 1967–exactly 1 year before his death.

Chicago Bulls @ Memphis Grizzlies (1pm EST)
Sheed averaged 15-6-2 against Chicago during his career. U2 pays homage to the assassination of Dr. King in their song “Pride (In the Name of Love)” with the following lyrics:
Early morning, April Four
Shot rings out, in a Memphis Sky
Free at last, they took your life
But they could not take your pride.

Milwaukee Bucks @ Philadelphia 76ers (1pm EST)
Rasheed Wallace was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Last winter, when throngs of citizens were protesting the governor outside the state capitol in Wisconsin, Reverend Jesse Jackson (a close friend of Dr. King who was with him the day he was assassinated) addressed the protesters, telling them, “This is a Martin Luther King moment; this is a Gandhi moment.”

Houston Rockets @ Washington Wizards (2pm EST)
President Kennedy–the only politician Dr. King admitted to wanting to endorse–drove the United States to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s; NASA’s headquarters in Houston was tasked with overseeing the Apollo program that put a man on the moon on July 20, 1969. Rasheed Wallace was selected 4th overall in the 1995 NBA draft by the Washington Bullets.

Cleveland Cavaliers @ Charlotte Bobcats (2pm EST)
In 2001–37 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act–the former majority owner of the Bobcats, Robert Johnson, became the first African-American billionaire. Rasheed Wallace spent 2004-2009 drawing the ire of NBA fans in Cleveland, especially when he “guaran-SHEED” victories against the Cavaliers in the 2006 playoffs.

Portland Trailblazers @ New Orleans Hornets (3pm EST)
Sheed. Blazers. Ask Sean, if you need to know more. In the 1990s, the Louisiana state legislature officially named Interstate 110 the Martin Luther King Junior Memorial Expressway.

New Jersey Nets @ Los Angeles Clippers (3:30pm EST)
Sheed’s only game as an Atlanta Hawk was against the New Jersey Nets. Dr. King would probably not be a huge fan of Donald Sterling.

Toronto Raptors @ Atlanta Hawks (4pm EST)
Dr. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. 1993 was a momentous year for two reasons: Jurassic Park, the namesake of the Toronto Raptors, had an opening weekend of over $50 million, easily making it the most popular dinosaur movie of all time. Just 3 months prior, freshman Rasheed Wallace helped the Carolina Tar Heels win coach Dean Smith’s last NCAA title.

Oklahoma City Thunder @ Boston Celtics (8pm EST)
Sheed’s final season in the NBA (or is it???) was played with the Boston Celtics. Based on a cursory internet search, I find absolutely zero evidence that Dr. King ever visited the state of Oklahoma.

Sacramento Kings @ Minnesota Timberwolves (8pm EST)
During Sheed’s tenure in Portland, the Blazers never once played the Kings in the playoffs. The University of Minnesota created the MLK program–an academic advising program that fosters multiculturalism– “after the landmark Morrill Hall take over by a group of African American students who were seeking equity of programming, faculty, classes and other services.”

Dallas Mavericks @ Los Angeles Lakers (10:30pm EST)
Another pioneer of Civil Rights in the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. After the Pistons beat the Lakers in the 2004 finals, Sheed bought all of his teammates celebratory championship belts.

Enjoy the games, everyone.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8lP7ZXe5t4

“I don’t give a (expletive) about no trade rumors. As long as somebody ‘CTC,’ at the end of the day I’m with them. For all you that don’t know what CTC means, that’s ‘Cut the Check.’ I just go out there and play. Again, somebody just ‘CTC.’”

From “Raw ‘Sheed” by Geoffrey C. Arnold

Never was this philosophy more evident in Rasheed Wallace’s career than the one game he played for the Atlanta Hawks during the 2003-04 season. In the middle of a season for which he is obviously better known for changing the fortunes of the Detroit Pistons on their way to an NBA Championship, Sheed made a cameo appearance for one of the league’s worst teams in a game that featured all sorts of weird tidbits.

It was on this night that new Nets head coach Lawrence Frank set the all-time NBA record for consecutive victories to open a head-coaching career with 10, breaking a tie with Kurt Rambis of the Los Angeles Lakers (1998-99) and Buddy Jeannette of the Baltimore Bullets (1947-48). Nets point guard Jason Kidd recorded his 58^th career triple-double with 15 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists, moving him within one triple-double of tying Larry Bird on the all-time list. Kenyon Martin put up 21 points and 10 boards – his second 20-10 game of the season against Atlanta – and Richard Jefferson chipped in with 24 points and 6 rebounds of his own.

The game also featured Rasheed Wallace on the same team as fellow crazy person Stephen Jackson, who of course would go on to play a big role in The Malice at the Palace as an Indiana Pacer the very next season. The fact that Sheed, Captain Jack and Kenyon Martin were all on the floor in a game that saw two technical fouls doled out and none of them were on the receiving end of either one is a minor miracle.

Rasheed was traded from the Portland Trail Blazers, one of two professional teams he had ever known (he played 65 games for the Washington Bullets as a rookie before getting traded to Rip City), to the Atlanta Hawks along with Wesley Person in exchange for Shareef Abdur-Raheem, Theo Ratliff and Dan Dickau during the All-Star break. Amidst swirling rumors that he was about to be traded yet again, Sheed suited up for what amounted to just another ho-hum loss for the Hawks, and he had what was a pretty typical mid-career Rasheed Wallace game.

He was active and aggressive on defense on his way to blocking 5 shots while not committing a single foul. He spent a little too much time on the perimeter, as he launched 6 three-pointers but made just one. Sheed being Sheed though, he still wound up with 20 points and 6 rebounds, scoring a little more and boarding a little less than his season averages of 16.0 points and 6.8 rebounds per game.

But it was the 42 minutes that Rasheed willingly played for a team that he clearly wasn’t staying with that stuck out in my mind. Everyone in NBA circles knew Wallace was headed out of town sooner rather than later, but he didn’t care, because for that night at least, the Hawks were cutting the check. Check out his quotes to reporters after the game, and it’s like you wouldn’t even know that this was his first – and likely to be his only – game with the Hawks. When asked about being the first team in the Nets’ 10-game win streak to not lose by double-digits, Sheed responded:

“Everybody thinks that just because we’re the Hawks we’re going to roll over and die. Maybe that was the thing before, but not now.”

Rasheed Wallace, 2/18/04

That, to me, does not sound like a guy who just got there, nor like a guy on his way out of town two days later. But Sheed took immediate ownership of the team and the situation, because that’s what Sheed did, everywhere he went. When he was with you, he was with you, whether it was for one day or for five years. He’d play for whomever cut the check, but as with everything, he’d do it on his terms.

I’m sure at this point everyone has seen the following:

Y! Sources: Rasheed Wallace considering comeback to the NBA. http://t.co/3o3DtraF

January 12, 2012 4:04 pm via UberSocial for BlackBerryReplyRetweetFavorite

@WojYahooNBA

Adrian Wojnarowski

In response (despite a small but passionate group of writers against the movement) the Paroxysm crew has decided to dedicate a entire week to unnecessary technical fouls, astounding talent, exuberant personality, incredible trick shots, and everything else that makes Rasheed Wallace ‘Sheed. We aren’t here to discuss whether or not ‘Sheed will come back, or even if it’s a good idea (because of course it is). We are here to celebrate and revel in everything ‘Sheed; both the delightful and the excruciatingly aggravating. To pick apart at the duality of a man who inspires both cult-esque devotion and refined resentment.

To those of us who love him ‘Sheed always kept things loose, allowed us to laugh in a world that often took itself far too seriously. ‘Sheed reminded us that basketball was supposed to be fun, and always found a way to enjoy himself. He’s provided more quotable lines than any other player in league history, and is the centerpiece of the greatest pre game warmup routine of all time. Despite a lot of criticism, ‘Sheed spent a lot of his time doing the less glamorous things that often helped  a team win. At his peak he was one of the greatest low post defenders ever and his turn around fade away over the “wrong” shoulder was completely unguardable. To some ‘Sheed was selfish in word and spirit, but his play was anything but. He never demanded the offense be run through him, and didn’t need to be seen as the “star” in order to be fulfilled.

In contrast, to many ‘Sheed stands as a malcontent, a waste of talent,  “what’s wrong with the NBA” personified. He racked up technical fouls, was often out of shape, and was infamous for failing to show up to weight lifting or workout sessions. For many Rasheed Wallace was a failure. He had the talent of Duncan and Garnett but lacked Garnett’s intensity, or Duncan’s poise. He was blamed for the most of Portland’s failures and was quickly labeled as a “cancer”. His bravado and brazenness turned off many, as did his temper. For many there was no need for ‘Sheed, only a simple wish that he’d shut up and focus on being a better basketball player.

The beauty is that neither of these views is “correct” or more justifiable. They are both based on the same facts, the same traits, the same ‘Sheed. That’s what makes this compelling, it’s also what makes it fun. This is the culmination of a career inextricably linked to our basketball worldview. This is laughing and marveling at a man who shoots left handed threes in an all star game. This is “both teams played hard”. This is getting ejected without saying a word. This is “felonious”. This is “ball don’t lie” becoming a cultural phenomenon. This is fun and frustration epitomized. This is ‘Sheed Week.