The NBA has always had its share of polarizing figures. Players like Dennis Rodman, Xavier McDaniel, Dillon Brooks, and Draymond Green have all earned reputations for irritating opponents and riling up basketball fans. Yet, no one ever embraced the villain role quite like Bill Laimbeer.
With the nickname of The Prince of Darkness, it was easy to see why Laimbeer was the most hated player in the NBA during his playing days. His style of play was often described as dirty and physical, thus becoming the poster boy of the successful yet controversial Bad Boys Detroit Pistons teams of the late 80s and early 90s.
While there were some players who dared to stand up to Bill’s bullying (Robert Parish’s flurry of punches in the 1987 playoffs immediately comes to mind), nobody got the latter better than former NBA veteran Olden Polynice.
Olden shattered Bill’s face
As the story goes, O’s team, the Seattle SuperSonics, played Bill’s Pistons in a preseason game in Michigan. As preseason games usually go, the contest was a tamer version of what would happen in the regular season; however, this didn’t stop Laimbeer from taking his usual cheap shots on Polynice.
“I had just made a basket. As Laimbeer takes the ball out of bounds, he grabs it out the net to go out of bounds, take it out, and he pops me,” Olden shared on Byron Scott’s podcast.
O was initially taken aback by Bill’s audacity, particularly given the insignificance of the match they were playing. However, his surprise quickly gave way to anger, fueling his resolve to ensure the Pistons’ big man wouldn’t get away with it.
“I turned around. I made the basket, I’m out of bounds, and as he hits me, I just walked up and hit him with the shoulder. Pow! Cracked him dead in the face. All you could see was blood splatter everywhere,” Polynice recalled.
“He went down, and they threw me out. It was my shoulder — I threw that. I didn’t throw a punch. I threw the shoulder right at him. I just got close. Pow! Cracked it. You could hear it and everything,” he added.
Polynice was ejected from that game and was initially slapped with a hefty fine. However, the league rescinded it as they couldn’t find any evidence of him throwing a punch at Laimbeer. The Pistons’ All-Star was later on diagnosed with a fractured cheekbone and had to wear a mask to protect it from further injury.
