Wallace T’d up at breakfast, suspended for Game 6

BOSTON, MA — A 3-2 deficit in the Eastern Conference Finals was already going to be tough for the Detroit Pistons to overcome, but this morning it got a lot tougher.

After picking up his sixth technical foul of the 2008 NBA Playoffs during Wednesday night’s Game 5, Rasheed Wallace received a technical foul for arguing over his eggs benedict at popular Boston breakfast destination Garden of Eden. According to NBA rules, any player receiving a seventh technical foul in the playoffs is suspended for one game.

“This is some bullshit, man,” Wallace told SSNN. “I was just grabbin’ some brunch before our flight back to the D, and all of a sudden Kenny Mauer comes out of nowhere and blows his stinking whistle. These refs are all over me, man – I can’t even send a fuckin’ eggs benedict back when it’s clearly been overcooked. The fucking yolk was all hard and shit – I’m Rasheed Wallace, I’m not about to eat some hard yolk-ass eggs benedict. Shit!”

Mauer, who also issued the tech to Wallace during the game, has a very different account of what happened. He says he was actually dining in a separate room of the restaurant when he heard the Pistons center making a scene.

“If it was no big deal, I wouldn’t have heard him yelling through a closed door,” Mauer explained. “It’s always something with Rasheed – water too cold, coffee too hot, yolk too hard… I mean, give me a break. I poked my head out and saw him berating this poor little waitress – and a 5′3″ waif with pigtails is pretty hard-pressed to stand up to a customer in that sort of situation, nevermind a customer who is nearly seven feet tall and known for his violent temper. But I just thought his behavior was totally uncalled for, so I did what I could do – I blew my whistle.”

According to other patrons of Garden of Eden this morning, Mauer’s story is far closer to the truth. One restaurant employee described Wallace as “the most offensive patron we’ve served since John Rocker came in a few years ago.”

“He started in on [his server] Sarah before he even ordered,” the employee said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the All-Star. “At first he wasn’t even really complaining about anything in particular, just sort of swearing and muttering about how everything was ‘all fucked up.’ If you ask me, the guy really has problems – it’s like he can’t shut up, even when he knows he should.”

Wallace says he has already filed a complaint with the league regarding the relatively untraditional foul call. But Mauer believes he was well within his rights to issue the technical, and expects David Stern and NBA headquarters to have his back.

“Technical fouls are supposed to be issued for inappropriate behavior, and are essentially accepted as a discretionary call for referees,” the veteran ref assured SSNN. “Bottom line – it was my judgment that Rasheed took his ranting too far, yet again. I see no grounds for the NBA to differ from my opinion, particularly since there’s no video documentation of the incident and it’s basically my word against ‘Sheed’s. Let’s just say that if I was Doc Rivers, I’d start preparing to match up against Theo Ratliff.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!