No one wanted to see Patrick McCaw fall the way he did Saturday night in Sacramento.
That includes the man responsible for him falling to the floor on his lower back, Vince Carter.
It was a scary play, but hopefully, one that brings nothing more than some swallowed spit and what will have to be a big fat bruise on McCaw’s lower back. According to the Warriors, x-rays and a CT scan were “clear”, and per Warriors beat writer Mark Medina, after some initial numbness, McCaw has regained feeling in his legs. The Warriors’ guard will undergo an MRI on Sunday.
But even if the hope that Saturday’s incident was all a big scare (I won’t call it an overreaction, because how would you react?) comes to pass — even if McCaw is on the court again in a few days without any lasting impediments beyond the memory of that moment and a tender lower back — Carter’s undercut of the Warriors’ second-year guard should be considered a dirty play.
If anyone deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to on-court character, it’s Carter, a 20-year veteran and one of the NBA’s most affable players. I don’t think of Carter as a dirty player — Saturday was his 14,000th NBA regular season game, and while there have been some high elbows during his long career, Saturday marked the first time I can recall him being involved in anything like what happened with McCaw.
But you don’t have to be a dirty player to make a dirty play.
Nor do you need to have the intent to injure on such a play for it be considered dirty.
Kevin Durant said after the game that “no one in the Warriors’ locker room” believes Carter wanted to hurt McCaw, but I’m in the same camp as Warriors coach Steve Kerr, who said the moment after the play happened “he knows better.”
Carter, likely too slow at this point in his career to properly defend the play, stuck out his arm in an effort to do… what exactly? He had no chance to cleanly disrupt the play, so his arm connecting with a jumping player — no matter how thin or heavy they might be — can only have one purpose: to undercut.
So even if it wasn’t his intent — and I don’t believe it was — doing what Carter did — by accident or a rare fit of rage that went horribly array — can’t be justified. There’s no place for that in the game.
That makes it a dirty play. Plain and simple.
Perhaps this all unnecessary basketball semantics, but when you’re dealing with an injury that, at least at the moment it happened, looked season-ending and possibly career-altering, ideally an argument of what “dirty” really means and if a player without a reputation for being dirty can make a dirty play is the only substantive thing that comes from Saturday.
“Reputation” is the key word in all of this. When players make dirty plays time and time again — there’s certainly someone on the Warriors who has earned that reputation around the NBA — they logically pick up a reputation as a dirty player. We can argue the merits of each transgression on those players’ rap sheet, but the reputation is well-earned.
But when the replays started to run and it was clear that Carter was responsible for McCaw being put on a stretcher, no one thought to themselves “there goes dirty Vince Carter again.”
Why? Because Carter, despite what happened Saturday, isn’t a dirty player.
And that’s why I don’t believe that Carter deserves a massive punishment from the league office and why I don’t think Saturday’s incident is going to be an asterisk moment that will taint his Hall of Fame career.
Carter has played long enough, and heavens knows he’s attacked the rim enough times, that he doesn’t need to be made an example. Even if he had no intention of undercutting McCaw, even if he never expected the Warrior guard to land on the court the way he did — straight on his back with a loud, empty thud, followed by writhing and screams of pain — he immediately knew that he was in deeply in the wrong.
Carter’s daze continued after the game, where he accepted responsibility for what he did and apologized to McCaw’s teammates. I wouldn’t be shocked if he visited McCaw in the hospital. https://twitter.com/loganmmurdock/status/980321653895806976
And that’s what separates Carter — someone who made a dirty play on Saturday — from the class of dirty players: the latter never fully cop to their transgressions.
Read Again https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/01/golden-state-warriors-patrick-mccaw-fall-injury-report-news-video-vince-carter-sacramento-kings-nba/Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Kurtenbach: A dirty play put Pat McCaw in the hospital, but don't call Vince Carter a dirty player"
Post a Comment