Phil Jackson and Shaquille O’Neal have deflated their share of basketball’s during their illustrious NBA careers, but have no worries, there is nothing scandalous about their actions.
Tom Brady and the New England Patriots are not the only culprits of deflating game balls. As it turns out, NBA legends Shaquille O’Neal and Phil Jackson deflated their share of basketballs during their reign of dominance over the NBA, but you will not see them hiding the admission from the media’s spotlight.
Actually, they openly admitted to doing so. Phil Jackson’s deflating days date back to the 1970’s, when he was a two-time NBA champion as a player for the New York Knicks.
Here is what Jackson had to say on the matter, via USA Today:
"“We were a short team with our big guys like Willis Reed, our center, only about 6-8 and Jerry Lucas also 6-8, Dave DeBusschere, 6-6, so we had to rely on was boxing out and hoping the rebound didn’t go long. To help ensure that, we’d try to take some air out of the ball. You see, on the ball it says something like ‘inflate to 7 to 9 pounds.’ We’d all carry pins and take the air out to deaden the ball.”"
Jackson would go on to explain that they never broke any rules, but simply deflated the balls to their preference, while not going under the required seven lbs PSI.
joy of tweet is correcting errors. Knicks used under inflated balls. wrong! ball has7-9lbs psi. we wanted 7 psi softer but not illegal.
— Phil Jackson (@PhilJackson11) January 28, 2015
O’Neal was not shy either in admitting to his role in deflating basketballs during his NBA career.
"“Sometimes, in the games during all my championship runs, if a ball was too hard, I let air out,” he said onThe Big Podcast With Shaq. “I’d have a needle. A friend of mine would have a needle and I would get the game ball. I needed that extra grip, but I wasn’t doing that for cheating purposes. I just needed the extra grip for my hands so I could palm it, a la Michael Jordan, the way he used to palm it.”"
So why is it that the New England Patriots and their golden boy are labeled as disgraced cheaters, while Shaq and Phil Jackson are able to skate free with essentially no criticism?
Well, there are two simple reasons.
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The first of which, Phil Jackson and Shaq are not notorious, serial cheaters that the Patriots organization has proved to be under the Bill Belichick regime. As if Spygate was not enough, where the team was caught redhanded illegally filming their opponents’ practices.
The second, and most important reason in the court of public opinion, however, is even more simple. Shaq and Jackson were very honest with their admissions, and they were not even breaking any rules. The Patriots organization, and Tom Brady in particular, still refuse to take any accountability for the recent ‘Deflategate’ scandal that has been the talk of the NFL for, well, way too long.
It is hard to forgive a player and organization that refuses to admit their wrongdoings. O’Neal and Jackson did not even do anything wrong, and they still felt no reason to conceal their actions.
Maybe New England and its star quarterback can take a note from two of the most respected figures in all of sports. They could certainly use a boost in their respect and credibility after losing nearly all of it in the past couple of months.
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