A Brief History of NBA Players Stupidly Punching Stuff

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This week Blake Griffin learned the hard way: When it's hand vs. face, the hand almost always loses. In every man’s life, there comes a time or two or eighty when you’re on Netflix, watching Donnie Yen pummel dudes into guacamole, and you clench your fists and look at ol’ Shock and Awe and think, “Aw yeah, I could totally do that.”

Clippers star Blake Griffin probably wasn’t trying any Wing Chun during his altercation with Clippers assistant equipment manager Matias Testi, but even though it was Blake doing the repeated punching, he didn’t exactly land the KO, either: “Testi was left with a severely swollen face and Griffin with a broken right hand, which is expected to keep him out for at least a month,” reported Deadspin. Wait, so who won that again?

Which brings us to our point. We think we’ve come up with some good guidelines for Blake and everyone else’s fisticuffs moving forward. Think of them as GQ’s official rules for punching dudes. And they’re pretty simple, too: 1. Don’t punch people. 2. If you’re going to punch people, don’t punch people in the face, because it’s extra dumb.

NBA players have a long history of jeopardizing their careers with face-based battery. Even a pacifist like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar kicked off the 1977 season by punching Kent Benson in the face; Kareem missed out on twenty games and his third consecutive MVP. In ’85, Larry Bird hurt his finger sucker-punching a man in a bar; he shot 46 percent in the playoffs, and the Celtics fell to the Lakers. (Not to mention: MJ, Kerr; Kobe, Samaki Walker.)

The Clippers, meanwhile, defeated the reigning-champion Spurs in the playoffs last year and looked to be at least third in the top-heavy Western Conference this season. Now experts are wondering which of the Clips’ big three is most expendable, and the trade rumors are a-swirlin’.

Look, it’s understandable why you would want to punch someone in the face. It’s the window to the soul, and sometimes you want to hit that stupid, smug soul right in its weaselly lips. Unfortunately, because the skull contains sensitive objects like your eyes and nose, it’s also built like a tank. In fact, research shows that hominid jaws and brows evolved to grow bigger and thicker as “protective buttressing,” crude bone armor against rival cavemen’s fists.

And professional people-punchers aren’t even exempt. Even though combat athletes all wear gloves (and even the four-ounce gloves UFC fighters wear make a big difference), there’s a name for the consequences of all those impacts: boxer’s fracture. See, to hit someone without fear of injury, you just have to make sure “the knuckles of the second and third metacarpal align linearly with the articulating radius, followed linearly by the humerus,” which is hard enough to understand when you’re reading it on Wikipedia, let alone when it’s 2 A.M. and someone’s telling you that DeAndre’s the real heart and soul of the team.

The military agrees as well. “Punches should only be executed to the soft tissue areas of an opponent,” says the U.S. Marine Corps’ Close Combat Manual. Whereas with the head and face, “the risk of self-injury is great unless Marines deliver strikes with a hard object such as a helmet, rifle butt, or boot heel.” Look forward to Matt Barnes showing up to game day with a flak helmet and the stock off a Beretta 690 later this year.

So really, there’s no reason to hit people, especially when you’re hitting your own hand harder. Besides, Blake: You’re Blake Griffin, man! Get revenge the American way and buy and sell his ass with your fabulous wealth and influence. Your metacarpals will thank you.