Today, at the end of the men’s basketball quarterfinal between France and Spain (which Spain won, 66-59), French forward Nicolas Batum landed the nut shot heard round the world on Spain’s Juan-Carlos Navarro. After the game, Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski asked Batum, who makes his money playing for Portland, why he went south of the border on the Spanish guard. Batum responded, “I wanted to give him a good reason to flop.” No wonder David Kahn likes this guy so much. Batum would later apologize for the shot, on Twitter: “I want to apologize for my stupid act at the end, I showed a bad image of France and myself, Congrats to team Spain.” Good on him, though you would have to say the damage, both on Franco-Spanish relations and Navarro’s family tree, has already been done.

Anyway, while we wait for the fallout from this grave international incident, let’s take a trip through some basketball ball crimes past.



The Rondo

Savage life. I doubt that Rajon Rondo invented leaping to save a ball from going out of bounds at the expense of an opposing player’s balls, but he certainly perfected the act. Did Rondo mean this? Let’s put it this way: I’ve seen Rondo flick a ball around his back with three fingers and hit Paul Pierce in stride, 30 feet away. So yeah, I think he hit his target here. It even spawned a copycat …

The Ouchie-Wally

… but you have to deduct points for asking the other guy if he’s OK.

The Green Submarine

If there is a certain magic to tagging a guy in the jewels, Kevin Garnett is Gandalf. Above is the Celtics big man taking a shot at Channing Frye’s little man. Mark Jackson on the call. There’s a hand down, man down joke here but it’s just beyond my grasp.

CP3: Ghost Protocol

Chris Paul may not like being touched on the head, but back in his Wake Forest days he certainly had no compunction throwing this cheap shot on Julius Hodge. I’m sure, based on his Twitter, Hodge would rather not be remembered for this incident:

Everytime CP3 hits a guy in the nuts my name has to be mentioned?Not my fault he’s a serial ball-grabber. Don’t associate me w/ that! Thanks — Julius Hodge (@Follow24Hodge) August 6, 2012

Well, I’m sorry, Julius Hodge. Stop being hilarious on Twitter, then.

The Cookie Jar

I can’t do any better than Ernie Johnson on this one.

If you’ve got any crimes you’d like to report, by all means leave them in the comments. I’ll be over here taking stock of my life and wondering why I find this all so hilarious.