Taking from the March 12 NBA Mailbag from Bill Simmons on Grantland, fans have been presented with an interesting question of (not quite) epical proportions: if you could guarantee your wife/girlfriend stayed away from one current NBA player who “could toss her like uncooked pizza dough,” who would it be?
Simmons went into his picks (and his wife’s picks) but I wanted to open up the question to all professional athletes and see where this rabbit hole takes us. It’s at least a fantastic bar debate.
Note: I'll try to stay recent, but a few oldies do sneak in. And of course, this is an absurd scenario, but try and humor me.
1) All WWE wrestlers. It’s a cop-out to start with, but you could name any one of them and you'd want desperately want your significant other to run in the opposite direction with the stamina of Forest Gump. They're huge, massive and crazy as shit sometimes. All the things you don't want your woman to end up with, right?
2) Ron Metta World Artest Peace — Knicks forward. Getting away from playing the weight card, if you care about your wife/girlfriend, there’s a 100 percent chance you don't want her to end up like James Harden’s temple. “Tru Warier” roars into this list with an all-star craziness rating. You'd worry for her safety, even if you believed her to be decidedly insane.
3) Ndamukong Suh — Lions defensive tackle. We've got three factors at play here: size, strength and crazy. Suh may one day be a real contender for many records at his position, he’s got talent, there’s no doubt. But Suh’s number of fines (for awhile it was week-to-week) and questionable actions have you dreading him as a rebound guy for your girl — assuming this scenario were in ANYWAY possible. Remember “The Stomp” or his other “unsportsmanlike conduct” (read: punching)? He’s as volatile as a WWE fighter, but without the excuse or the network television channel, so he makes the list.
4) Ray Lewis — retired Ravens linebacker. Again, we're talking about crazy here. We're also talking about the “Will-To-Keep-Fighting Rating.” Ray put on an inspiring performance in Super Bowl XLVII when he went out to play in a Cyborg costume and still made an impact on the game. He also is just flat out nuts half the time. Oh, and there was that one time he was charged with murder following Super Bowl XXXIV — and yes, he was acquitted in 2000 and made multiple settlements, but still, it’s gotta be a factor.
5) CC Sabathia — Yankees pitcher. Now, CC is a wild card because we have to take into account stamina and intensity. He’s a good pitcher and baseball player, so this is not to take away from his talent on the field, but he’s listed at 6-feet-7 and weighing in at a benevolent 290 pounds (maybe when he was in Cleveland? No? Damn.). You definitely don't want your girl with him so he ends our list, but at least it won't be anything crazy.
Shaq — retired former-basketball star. Mr. O'Neal gets the mention and it stems from a “tell-all” article about one of Diesel’s mistresses. It’s great for the one section where she talks about his sweat. Free-throw shots may require lots of concentration and mental effort, but… other stuff should have him going through ShamWows faster than Bounty commercials go through the “ineffective competition” that can’t hold bowling balls midair.
(Note: The “tell-all” happened, didn't it? I might be losing my mind, but I surely remember reading an article where she said something about having to buy a new mattress and it has stuck with me to this day. I even brought it up at a sports desk meeting where I worked at a while back. But after a fair amount of research, I couldn't find the article or a reference to it anywhere. Am I crazy? Anyway, the fact still remains he sweats a lot but without the article, it just seems like beating a drenched dead horse — or, what the Celtics basically already called Shaq during his final season.)
O'Neal also gets the award for “No. 1 Athlete You Don't Want To Catch Your Lady With In Your Own Home” award — award categories sure are getting pretty long and specific nowadays, aren't they?
Michael Jasper — Panthers lineman. And this is totally unfair because the only reason he’s been on my radar the past year is because I live in North Carolina and he’s on that team, even if he doesn't play, but this 6-4 2011 draftee weighs in at a bedspring-obliterating 375 pounds. NFL linemen have to be big, this isn't a secret, but if your girl got swept off her feet by this Panther, you’d want her to see a chiropractor.
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