This week, the Suns suspended Markieff Morris for throwing a towel at coach Jeff Hornacek while on the sideline during a loss to Denver. There has been much frustration to go around between the Suns poor start this year and Morris’ pre-season trade demand after his brother Marcus was traded to Detroit. Coaches and players fight all the time but the dreaded towel toss usually pops up when things are particularly messy. Does the towel toss really mean things are really so dire? Maybe. Morris’ outburst reminded me of two other notable towel tosses that occurred over the last 20 years: (a) Robert Horry’s 1997 angry toss at coach Danny Ainge, and (b) Rasheed Wallace’s 2001 slam in Arvydas Sabonis’ face. Let’s take a walk down memory lane and see how these incidents compare with Morris’:
-Horry and Ainge: In 1996-97, the Suns were attempting to rebuild the franchise after having traded Charles Barkley to the Rockets for a package that included a young Horry. The Suns started out the year 0-8 and coach Cotton Fitzsimmons resigned, setting Ainge for his first coaching gig (Ainge had very recently retired). The losing streak, however, did not stop until Phoenix was 0-13. Ainge bounced back with a five game winning streak but the team was still floundering at 10-22, when the Suns went to Boston to play a horrible Celtic team on January 5, 1997. The Suns were listless and lost 109-102.
Horry was taken out of the game in the fourth quarter and, according to the New York Times, Horry “screamed obscenities at Ainge and threw a towel in his face before being restrained by teammates.” Horry’s numbers for the game were also not great (in 20 minutes, 1-4 for 4 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 turnovers).
The Suns suspended Horry two games (same exact penalty Morris got this week). There was little explanation as to what happened but Jerry Colangelo attributed the incident to Horry’s “frustration with his own play.” Horry quickly apologized but the Suns traded him to the Lakers for Cedric Ceballos four days later. Ainge denied the towel throw caused the trade: “The incident had nothing to do with this. We would have made the trade regardless. Robert was struggling in our system. He just never fit in. Cedric is a good player who can give us some scoring.”
In case you are wondering, here is how Horry and Ceballos were doing at the time of the deal:
-Ceballos: 28.5 mpg, 14.6 ppg, .457 FG%, 6.6 rpg, 1.3 apg, 9.7 PER, -3.3 BPM
-Horry: 22.5 mpg, 6.9 ppg, .421 FG%, 3.7 rpg, 1.7 apg, 11.1 PER, 0.3 BPM
It’s pretty clear that the Suns and Lakers were just trading headaches (the Lakers didn’t need scorers with Shaq on the team anyway) and Ceballos had been even worse than Horry. Fortunately, both Horry and Ceballos played much better the rest of the year and the Suns, even rallied to make the playoffs. Horry, of course, would later go on to win a ton of rings in Los Angeles and San Antonio.
Conspicuously absent from the contemporaneous reports was any details to the Horry-Ainge argument. In 2007, Horry finally gave some details as to why he was so angry. He told Johnny Ludden from Yahoo that he was mad about being traded from a good Houston team and thought the front office in Phoenix was trying to make him look bad: “When I was in Phoenix there were not good times. It was a bad situation coming in there. They lied about Sam [Cassell] and I saying we demanded money. I know talking to Sam he didn’t want money because he didn’t want to stay in Phoenix. I know I didn’t want money because I didn’t want to stay in Phoenix. I just wanted my contract to end.”
In addition, Horry acknowledged that he still saw Ainge as the pesky rival from Phoenix from the battles they had with the Rockets in 1993-94 and 1994-95 playoffs: “I had the animosity against Danny Ainge from playing against him – he hit Mario [Elie] in the face with the ball. It was a lot of stuff that boiled up. I made the mistake of throwing a towel in Danny’s face and after that I have been booed [in Phoenix]. After that hard foul on Steve Nash [against Phoenix in the 2006-07 playoffs], I’m even more reviled.”
There you have it…Horry was young and hot tempered and took his anger about leaving Houston, struggling on offense, and taking instruction from a former rival and channeled it into a towel toss. Life moved on and Horry had a great career and Ainge did just fine too.
-Rasheed Wallace and Aryvdas Sabonis: In April 2001, Wallace and Sabonis were playing Shaq and the Lakers. Sabonis, who is quite large, still flopped and attempted to draw falls on Shaq. During one of his gesticulations, Sabonis inadvertently smacked Wallace in the face. According to this old AP Report, Wallace was not happy: “Wallace, who had his left eye blackened by Sabonis’ elbow during another inadvertent hit at Golden State on April 6, doubled over. He yelled at Sabonis as the teams went to their benches for a time-out. Still furious, Wallace threw a small, white towel into Sabonis’ face, then walked away. [Sabonis] sat red-faced, as teammates Will Perdue and Scottie Pippen stared after Wallace in disbelief.” The Lakers would go on to win the game 105-100. Wallace ended up with 28 points and Sabonis had 9 points and 8 boards (Shaq had 33 points and 18 boards).
At the time, Wallace, who was never particularly calm, was at the peak of his tantrum range. He had already been assessed 41 technicals that season and been suspended earlier for previously throwing a towel at a ref. Coach Mike Dunleavy suspended Wallace a game for the Sabonis incident and chalked up the dispute to miscommunication but admitted that the towel throw was not “warranted.” Sabonis did not react at the time but, after the season, he complained that Dunleavy didn’t handle the personalities well, saying that Dunleavy failed to “bring the team’s stars down to planet Earth, and should have been fired midseason.”
This incident (and all the other ones in that year) didn’t get Sheed traded. Rather, he remained in Portland until mid-2003-04, when the team was stalled out and needed to rebuild. Sabonis played in Europe in 2001-02 but returned to Portland for 2002-03, so he apparently wasn’t refusing to play with Wallace either.
As a postscript to the story, in 2011, Johnathan Abrams wrote a great feature on Sabonis in honor of his Hall of Fame induction. In the story, Abrams briefly address the towel issue with Portland announcer Eddie Doucette. Doucette noted that the much larger and stronger Sabonis could’ve bent Wallace into a balloon animal but declined to do so: “Under normal circumstances, [Sabonis would] have probably knocked [Wallace’s] head into next year. I don’t think you want to challenge Arvydas. But he kept his cool because he knew that if he didn’t, that team would come apart right there. He did a marvelous job of remaining composed.”
What does this all mean for Morris? A few things…Throwing a towel at your coach/teammate in public is really a dumb way of resolving a disagreement but it will not irreparably damage anyone’s career. The Suns clearly wanted to trade Morris before this incident. Between his poor play this season (his offense has catered) and this stuff, Phoenix maybe stuck dumping him for another problem. Maybe Ceballos is still available?