The Sports Informant

My grandpa once told me after I’d gotten in a fight with my sister as a child that if I ever hit a woman my hand would stick up from out of my grave when I die. The thought haunted me for years.

Apparently, WNBA Detroit Shock assistant coach Rick Mahorn didn’t get the memo.

For those of you not tuning into WNBA games each night, there was a bench-clearing brawl in the July 22 matchup with the Shock and the Los Angeles Sparks. Rookie Candace Parker of the Sparks and Detroit’s Plenette Pierson got into a tangle and both fell to the floor. Pierson got up and went to stand over Parker, who then tackled her to the ground, starting a slew of events that culminated in the most shocking news of all.

Yes, there was a fight in the WNBA that cleared both benches. While that’s something new, it’s not the news. As teammates tried to break up the fight, which had mostly some wrestling and shoving but no punches, Mahorn joined the party. Only instead of pulling his own players away, he went after LA’s, and that’s what’s got the world talking.

Lisa Leslie, a team leader for years for the Sparks, looked to be trying to separate fighters when Mahorn grabbed her and shoved her to the ground. This wasn’t an accident. Video clearly shows the much bigger and stronger Mahorn fling Leslie several feet back and onto her backside, where she laid in shock, and eventually in tears.

Mahorn was ejected from the game, but the more I watch the video, the more I think he should be ejected from the WNBA, forever.

Professional coaches make a lot of money. They are representatives of the highest level of sport, and like politicians, need to act correctly while representing their teams. They must give professional interviews, help promote their players and company, and in heated situations, keep a cool head. Mahorn did the opposite, and broke not only professional standard, but respectable human nature.

It takes a little man to hit a woman, and although he didn’t physically assault her, an aggressive shove from a former professional athlete probably 100 pounds heavier than Leslie is grounds for firing and even prosecution.

I remember I broke up a girl fight in high school once. Two gangster girls from opposite colors met behind the school and duked it out to the joy of an idiot crowd. As a senior at the high school hoping to keep the place respectable, I immediately ran over and stood between the girls, acting as a buffer to prevent them from hitting each other. It didn’t work.

They kept swinging and clawing at one another, pulling hair as if I wasn’t even there. My temptation was to shove both of them away from one another, using my experience as a lineman on the football team to protect them both from each other. But my better thinking overrode that, knowing if either of them got hurt in the process, not only could I be held accountable, but would be running into a few male shady characters in retaliation later on.

So I stood there like a wall, taking the blunt of their damage for them, and when teachers came and helped me stop the fight completely, had a few scratches and a ripped shirt to show for it.

In the end, I regretted nothing. I bought a new shirt, and if I couldn’t handle a few scratches from two girls, what the heck was I doing lining up on the football field each week?

Mahorn should have done the same. The guy’s a rock, and what’s better to put between a hard place?

Instead, now he’ll have some explaining to do for a long time. And hopefully, he’ll be doing it from home, where he’ll be looking in the classifieds for a new job.