It seems as if the NFL shouldn’t feel as if they are the only ones guilty of the deflated ball scandal. As you all should know by now, the New England Patriots have been found guilty of deflating the footballs in which they used to defeat the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship game. Star quarterback and 2015 Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady was suspended for 4 games of the upcoming season and the team was fined 1 million dollars. However, football players might not be the only athletes who take part in this activity. They might not even be the first to do it either.
According to NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal, the NBA deflated basketballs long before the NFL deflated footballs. .
“Sometimes, in the games in all my championship runs, if a ball was too hard, I let air out. I’d have a needle. A friend of mine would have a needle and I would get the game ball.” O’Neal said on his latest podcast.
And he’s not the only one who agreed with him. New York Knicks President and O’Neal’s old coach for the Lakers Phil Jackson also stated that he took part in this activity during his playing days with the Knicks dating back to the 1970’s.
“What we used to do was deflate the ball. We were a short team with our big guys like Willis, our center, only about 6-8 and Jerry Lucas also 6-8, DeBusschere, 6-6. So what we had to rely on was boxing out and hoping the rebound didn’t go long.” Jackson told the Chicago tribune, via ESPN.
It seems as if this has been going on for years in the game of basketball. But the idea that its just coming out now is astonishing. If this has been the history of sports and several teams have done it, can we really call it cheating? Can we really say the outcome of games would have been different? Apparently, this is just a normal activity for professional athletes, coaches, organizations, as well as leagues.
