So says Dime Magazine.. in its list of the top 10 "sneaky dirty" NBA players.
8. Ray Allen — Another of the NBA’s nice guys who definitely has
a dark side. Glaring at somebody or talking smack after hitting a big
shot is one thing (everybody does that on the playground), but Ray’s
history goes deeper than that. His scraps with Bowen and Kobe are
well-known, and he’s also been known to swing an elbow towards the
baby-making region. Ray got into a scrap with Keyon Dooling in Seattle
a few years back that was just as bad as Nate Robinson/J.R. Smith
brawling in MSG, it just didn’t get as much hype because it wasn’t in
New York.
I'm not going to make any apologies for the elbow to Andy Varejao's marbles. But can you call a guy dirty because he scrapped with someone? As for Rondo:
9. Rajon Rondo — After Rondo slapped Brad Miller in the face and
threw Kirk Hinrich into the scorer’s table with zero repercussions,
Aaron Gray must have been praying he didn’t get any PT during that
Bulls/Celtics series, otherwise he’d end up on the hit list.
It's amazing that Rondo, who had never had any sort of incident in his career before the Bulls series... and who was becoming a darling of NBA observers with his play in that series... suddenly became a "dirty" player at that instant. I wonder if it would be different if the situation was reversed and Derrick Rose raked Paul Pierce across the face. Would Rose be on the list? Would he be hated now too... or would he still be everyone's "next great NBA Player"?