June 9, 2011

It's time.

The no-headband rule was instituted by John Paxson circa 2004, after Bulls bench player Eddie Robinson was repeatedly seen in practice wearing his headband around his neck. To Paxson, this presented an unnecessary choke hazard, and when Robinson petulantly refused to do anything about it, Paxson felt he had to ban headbands altogether, for that was the only way to get Robinson to stop.

The rule wasn't a big deal until Ben Wallace, upping the petulance stakes a little, made it so. Wallace snuck a headband onto the court for the start of an otherwise forgettable regular season game, and when Scott Skiles noticed this, he had little choice but to bench him. Wallace was put back into the starting lineup for the second half of the same game, yet again he had smuggled out a headband, and took the court wearing it. Once again, he was benched, and the scandal of Headbandgate ensued.²⁹ It was a completely unnecessary blight upon the franchise brought about by players being children, and the hierarchy - whose hands were tied - were made to look ridiculous purely for enforcing rules they didn't want to have even created. It was a bad time.

The particularly galling part of it all is that, while Ben Wallace has long been synonymous with wearing a headband, particularly when he had his big fro, there have been many, many, many, many games in which he has not worn one, by choice. It does not take much Googling to find pictures that evidence this. Here's one. Here's another. Et cetera. Ben needlessly brought up, broke, and eventually won an exception to, a rule that was not a particularly big deal to anyone, not even to him.

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