Expert: Fabio Anderle - 5/14/2010

Question
Why was Danny Ainge considered to be the most hated player when he was playing professional basketball? What exactly did he do on the court to merit such a reputation?

Answer
Hi Annie,

well, I would not say that Ainge was considered the most hated player, I’d probably give that infamous nod to Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn of the Detroit Pistons. But Daniel Rae Ainge was not beloved outside Boston, that I can concede. He was a very hard nosed player and his combative and brash personality often stroke a nerve in the opponents.

His bad reputation probably started in the 1983 playoffs when the Milwaukee coach (and former Celtic) Don Nelson called him “a dirty player”, infuriating Red Auerbach, the boston patriarch.
In the previous playoffs series against Atlanta Ainge had been in a fight with the Hawks center Wayne “Tree” Rollins, who bit Ainge’s finger, prompting a Boston Herald reporter to publish the great headline “Tree Bites Man”'. In the aftermath, in a classic case of “telephone effect”, the story was twisted so dramatically that in the public perception the event eventually ended up having Ainge being blamed for biting Rollins.

In the Eighties, though, brawls were quite common: in that decade Larry Bird was involved in many incidents, the brawls with Allen Bristow, Julius Erving and Bill Laimbeer being the most famous ones. In the 1984 playoffs Ainge fouled hard Knicks guard Darrell Walker, and the foul ignited a bench clearing brawl that caused a fallout of fines from the NBA, but no one was suspended. Danny Ainge was involved in other minor tussles the most famous being the ones with “Magic” Johnson and Michael Jordan, and in the 1994 playoffs, while playing for the Phoenix Suns, he “accidentally” hit Houston's Mario Elie in the head with an inbounding pass.

In my opinion, Danny Ainge was not a “dirty” player. The problem is, there is a fine line between competitiveness and unsportsmanlike conduct, especially in a contact game like basketball, and of course a player will sometimes perceive as violent what the opponent sees as “hardball” or tough but fair antagonism. But I never saw him delivering cheap shots with the intent of causing harm to an opponent, like I saw Laimbeer. That’s why in my humble opinion Ainge was a tough competitor but not a dirty player.
I hope this helps


Fabio