Believe me, I'm steeled for an anticipated volley of e-mails, but he also knows more about the game than you seem to think. He knows, for example, exactly what he has been up against trying to defend Orlando's Dwight Howard, something he does not have to concern himself with in tonight's Game 6 of their hammer-and-tong, first-round playoff series.
Sam knows reality, and he knows perception. The reality is, league officials reviewed Howard's first-quarter elbow to Sam's head in Tuesday night's Game 5 and suspended Howard without pay for tonight's game. That's simply the rule: An elbow to the head brings a suspension. It should have brought an ejection, not merely a technical foul, in Game 5.
"The league did what it's supposed to do," Sixers president/general manager Ed Stefanski said. "The refs legitimately called what they saw, and they said they didn't see the contact. It's not unusual for the league to review a play after the fact."
The reality is, Sam and Theo Ratliff will be up against Marcin Gortat and Tony Battie tonight. I remember Jameer Nelson telling me as early as last summer that he thought Gortat could play; the box score of the Magic's second-to-last regular-season game, when Howard rested, shows Gortat taking 18 rebounds. And Battie is a veteran. Oh, and I'm old enough to have been courtside for Game 6 of the 1980 Finals, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was out and rookie Magic Johnson jumped center and had one of the most dramatic performances by a visitor in the history of the Spectrum. Jamaal Wilkes played the role of quiet assassin and scored 35 points and the Lakers won the championship. Funny how everybody remembers Magic, and no one seems to remember Wilkes.
