"What if Hitler had conquered the world?"
"If you could have any three super powers, what would they be?"
"Would you rather have sex with Rosie O'Donnell or Tyra Banks who has been dead for three hours?"
(Acceptable answers: "That would have sucked"; "Flying, x-ray goggles and the ability to ejaculate up to 100 feet"; "You're disgusting for asking me that...obviously, Tyra. Hope she's not too cold.")
But the greatest hypothetical question I have ever heard was posed to me by our esteemed colleague Dr. Funaki (Fun Fact: He chose "Dr. Funaki" because that is his name for his penis. He spends a lot of time thinking about penis. I'm just putting it out there.) at last night's Nets-Hawks game - What if Joe Johnson celebrated a string of made three pointers by showing everyone his Wang Zhizhi?
Here's the conversation that immediately transpired:
Me: (laughing for a good while) He should. Besides, there are only like two thousand people here. (edit: official attendance - 1,480. My mistake.)
Dr. Funaki: Seriously, what if he did that? What would the NBA even do?
Me: Suspend him for a season...No, wait, they'd suspend him indefinitely. He wouldn't be allowed back for a long time.
Dr. Funaki: What?!?!? I was thinking two games.
That's right. You're going to be reading that man's thoughts on the NBA on this blog starting this weekend. I hope he has room on his desk for both his laptop and his drool cup. While we're at it, we should have my 17 year old sister live blog tomorrow's Grizzlies-Knicks game.
I admit, this hypothetical question isn't nearly as easy to answer as the aforementioned Rosie vs. Decomposing Tyra query. We have seen countless violations of social norms in the world of sports, but this is actually unprecedented. Think about it. We've seen...
Tits even bigger than John Kruk's on a baseball diamond:
Rick Mahorn act as a peacemaker:
Referee Mills Lane sporting a shaved-and-waxed dome:
I mean, this was 1997. A white guy doing that wasn't something you'd see everyday.
But an athlete dropping his drawers in front of over a million viewers on TV and literally hundreds of Nets fans? THAT is something we have never seen.
We all know the aftermath of the Malice at the Palace. Artest was suspended for the season, Stephen Jackson got 30 games, JO got 25 games (reduced to 15 after an appeal), Ben Wallace got 6 games and David Harrison wasn't punished despite punching a Pistons fan because the league office doesn't have a fucking clue who David Harrison is.
So, one could argue that Johnson couldn't possibly get a worse punishment than Stephen Jackson did for his role in the brawl. I mean, after all, Stephen Jackson was PUNCHING fans. True. But if there's one thing that we can all agree on, it's that as Americans we are far more adversed to sexual images than we are to violent images. Ultimately, unless you were one of the fans getting KTFO by a basketball player, than that's all the event was: a series of images. We all watched the highlights after it happened and we all felt sick to our stomachs. Then we laughed. A lot. It's amazing how the television can afford us complete emotional distance.
But a DONG? We can't handle that. Unless you're Dr. Funaki, then you handle that all the time (bada chhhhhhh).
Violence is all around us and to an extent, is acceptable in some form just about everywhere. But we are thoroughly conditioned to keep nudity out of certain forums (cheerleader cleavage doesn't count). The values and perceived norms that we carry with us on a daily basis are projected on to sports (with exceptions, but not in this case). It may seem nonsensical, but parents would unequivocally rather expose (no pun intended) their small children to extreme violence than to nudity.
You think people were shocked by a mini-riot in Detroit? Just wait until Joe Johnson (or another brave basketballer) whips it out. He'd get suspended indefinitely and if he was lucky, could get the sentence commuted after a few years ala Birdman.
The brawl happened a little over three years ago and it's already old news (Hell, the Donaghy scandal is stale). But we would remember Joe Johnson's magnificent dong for the rest of our lives. And that is exactly why David Stern would make sure that he wouldn't be allowed to touch a basketball in the Western Hemisphere for a long long time.
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