- Rasheed Wallace’s ‘Welcome to the NBA’ moment certainly wasn’t a pleasant one
- Wallace was screaming after a dunk which led to Joe Kleine warning him not to do it again
- Wallace didn’t take it seriously and paid the price
Rasheed Wallace is one of the more colorful personalities that the NBA has ever seen. He was very expressive on the court and wore his emotions on his sleeve, which often led to him getting in trouble with the officials.
His personality once got him in trouble with a player though, as Wallace spoke about his ‘Welcome to the NBA’ moment being a game against the Phoenix Suns where he went up against Joe Kleine.
“I know y’all remember him. Joe Kleine,” Wallace said on the All The Smoke podcast. “Redhead, Arkansas. We’re playing and you know me, back then I gotta dunk. Boom! (screams) I’m running down the court. ‘Hey, you little mother******. If you do that again,’ he said ‘I’m gon’ wipe you out.’ (I said) ‘Man, whatever dog. You ain’t going to do nothing to me.’
“Yo, two, three plays later we ran the same play, just a little different option and I’m trying to go to the rim,” Wallace continued. “I got the ball in my hand, next thing I know, I’m grabbing for hands getting up off the floor.”
“He was a lumberjack or something,” Stephen Jackson added. “He was too strong, dawg. For basketball, you didn’t need all that.”
“He said ‘I told you! Don’t bring that s*** down here with me!'” Wallace stated.
The fact that Kleine, who was just a role player in the 1980s and 90s, is still remembered so well by the likes of Jackson tells you something. He clearly wasn’t someone to be messed with and Wallace found that out the hard way. Kleine would end up playing 15 seasons in the league and won a championship with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in 1998.
Andre Iguodala Made A Bold Claim About How Good Rasheed Wallace Would Be In Today’s NBA
Wallace would go on to have a fine NBA career, with averages of 14.4 PPG, 6.7 RPG, 1.8 APG, 1.0 SPG, and 1.3 BPG. He also made the All-Star team four times and won an NBA championship in 2004. Wallace was a very good player for a very long time but Andre Iguodala felt he would have been great in today’s NBA.
He claimed Wallace would be a top-five player if he was playing today and would be better than Giannis Antetokounmpo. That might be a bit of a stretch, but it speaks to just how highly Iguodala rates Wallace. He understandably got some pushback for it, though, but stated it is a testament to how great Giannis is and how good Wallace was.
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