Bring on the Basketball Fights That Will Never Happen

You needed even more proof that the NBA season is too long for its own good, and now you have it.
 
Drake wants to fight Kendrick Perkins, Draymond Green wouldn't mind getting up in Rajon Rondo and vice versa, and Charles Barkley wants someone else to punch Draymond Green.
 
Those were last night's big moments from a great game (Cleveland-Toronto) and one pretty good one (Pelicans-Warriors).
 
And of course Stephen Curry rolled away the stone for the third time this season, but that was just proof that the season is too long for players' bodies. The other three were proof that the season is too long for their tempers.
 
Green and Rondo, you could figure. They are both accomplished player/irritants; it is part of their weaponry, and they flash it on command. That they got there in Game 2 of what has been a relatively innocuous series may simply be a tribute to their own skills, but facts are facts. It's Game 2, and they don't like each other.
 
The Barkley item, which springs from the Rondo-Green incident, seemed more genuine, as though Barkley were clearly irked by Green, and his calling card sentence, "I wish someone would punch his ass in the face," is a certifiable classic in any idiom. Still, he's seen Green maybe a hundred times, and surely Green has been more irritating at least 20 of those times. Hell, he was more irritating when he dunked over Nikola Mirotic and screamed in triumph in a way that made it look like he was going to become a praying mantis and bite off Mirotic's head.
 
But the Drake-Perkins thing is out-and-out madness. They talked smack as folks do, and then it took a turn, and suddenly the 30-something hip-hop artist snapped and had to be held back while the 30-something player/refrigerator was moved away from the argybargy before it became a hospital-level mismatch.
 
In short, tempers do seem a bit chafed in a sport that, unlike hockey, isn't usually dependent upon fighting to set or change the tone of a game. And getting one's face punched in its ass is, while hilarious, also . . . oh, the hell with it, it's hilarious.
 
So let's have more of this before the Western Conference Finals start, and through the duration of the Eastern Conference playoffs. If irritation is the new theme of these playoffs, let's do it up big. Let's have Pelicans trainer Duane Brooks and Warrior head of performance therapy Chelsea Lane offer to throw hands at each other at halftime if need be.
 
As long as neither of them says "I'll punch your ass in the face." Surely they know more about physiology than that.