BY ANDREW GREENBLATT

In print | Published April 28, 2011

The headline read “Zaza Pachulia Headbutts Jason Richardson – Richardson smacks Pachulia.” Obviously I clicked on the article, but it wasn’t a headbutt or a smack that I saw once I saw the footage from the fourth quarter of Friday’s playoff match-up. Here’s how it really went down: Pachulia hacks Howard (in my opinion it was an obvious hack but nothing unusual for the NBA playoffs). Howard flails his arms out excessively, elbowing Pachulia in the face. Pachulia, visibly upset, looks around venting his anger. At this exact moment, Jason Richardson comes to Dwight Howard’s rescue. I’m not really sure what Richardson was thinking here: Howard is a seven-foot-tall freak of nature who can’t fit through door frames, but Richardson enters.

At this point Zaza begins to talk a whole ton of smack moving his head violently from side to side. As his head makes the slightest bit of contact with J-Rich, Richardson pushes his hand in Zaza’s face in a way more disrespectful than malicious. The teams converge on the disagreement, and a hellaciously mismatched referee plunges into the middle of the action, somehow separating the two behemoths. The Hawks hold their teammate Zaza back as Dwight Howard engulfs Richardson.

A fairly typical sports scuffle, but notice one thing: Zaza and J-Rich didn’t actually do anything. They made an awfully convincing scene of anger and aggression but in the end, after a semi-incidental headbutt and a hand push to the face gentle enough to use to smear some schmutz off of your hand, two elite athletes were separated by a middle-aged fairly out of shape referee, and to top it all off, they were suspended for a game. The mindless guy-at-the-end-of-the-bar sports fan in me wants to get up obnoxiously and say too loudly and presumptuously, “if you’re gonna get suspended, you might as well hit the guy! Am I right?” But wait.

When I was abroad in Barcelona I met the second love of my life, a bubbly and infectious volleyball player from Ibiza named Marta who I’ve told half of Swat’s campus about already. Marta and I developed a tragically enchanting relationship that flowered out of my unconditional and undying love for her and her endless amusement in my American antics. But, according to Tania, Marta and her boyfriend were deeply in love and potentially getting married. Little did I realize it then, but as I was professing my love for Marta, sharing unabashedly my plans for our wedding, I was 100 percent delusional. Under what I thought was an intensity of love I had never known, I was blinded by what was actually the safety blanket of impossibility (both geographically and romantically). It was the impossibility that let my imagination, and mouth, run wild. Knowing that there was little time left, I was telling Marta that if she ever broke up with her boyfriend that I’d be on the next flight to Barcelona to sweep her off her feet. At the time I was proud of my honesty; at least she knew how I felt.

Fast forward to Friday, shortly after Jason Richardson and Zaza Pachulia kind of almost fought, a fascinating notification popped up on my Facebook news feed. My eyes weren’t deceiving me. Marta, after four years, was single. A moment of what could have been elation (and was) turned out to be dominated by the all too real realization that if I wanted to be on the next flight to Barcelona, I’d have to make some serious sacrifices. In a weird way I missed the unavailable and impossible Marta, when she had a boyfriend, when I was in the Dwight Howard-death-grip-of-impossibility. Even if I wanted to escape and put my life on hold to go to Europe, I couldn’t because she was locked down. Now, with the world at my fingertips, possibility loomed over me as I came to realize how lofty the claims I made actually were. It’s not that I all of a sudden don’t want to sweep Marta off her feet, it’s just that I no longer have the luxury of an excuse.

I think a lot of athletes feel this way when they get into fights during the game. It’s not that they don’t want to fight, it’s just that the expectation of being held back gives you a false sense of bravado. Think about it in terms of going out; you have a lot more confidence when you know you’re rolling with your boys, right?

Most sports fights are just scuffles with a lot of screaming and rage induced insults heightened by that exact bravado. While there are exceptions (Charlie Villanueva for one) many athletes only muster up the courage to let the fists fly only with the comfort of not having to really fight.

So what do we do? First off, this is why hockey is awesome; they took the performative pageantry out of it. If you want to fight someone you’ll have your shot, so hockey players don’t bother with all the trash talk unless they’re serious about throwing down. Secondly, don’t blame the athletes, because in the moment I truly believe that they want to fight, the anger is real and the aggression is evident, but take away that safety blanket of impossibility and see what happens. I really love Marta and still do, and still might go to Barcelona to sweep her off her feet, but with the opportunity in my lap, I’m not running to book my flights as fast as I thought I would. It’s not that athletes aren’t tough enough to fight, or that they’re just trying to look cool, it’s just that being really angry and actually hitting somebody are two totally different things. Does Zaza still halfway headbutt J-Rich if there was nobody to interfere? Maybe not, but the security of impossibility certainly made it easier.

Maybe that’s why people scream “Hold me back,” instead of, “Let me go.”

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