these players put fear in their opponent's Hearts not because of their skill or the number of points they were scoring but because of their sheer physical strength and willingness to throw hands at any given moment this is a list of players that nobody wanted to mess with the scariest NBA players of all time there were plenty of NBA players who could fight but only one was a real MMA fighter James Johnson a 6'7 240 lb power forward Who currently plays for the Pacers was a lead vote getter in a survey of who in the league
would you least like to fight since he was 5 years old Johnson trained karate and is a black belt he's also competed in kickboxing with a 20-0 amateur record and a 7-0 MMA record he even said that he could beat Jon Jones if he had enough time to train wrestling not going to beat him for real but like I said with a year of training defense I just need ground defense the whole league would say the same thing one player said of Johnson that's not smoke they want I've seen it in person and it's easy
to be a bully when you're one of the biggest and strongest guys in the court but how about being one of the most most terrifying players in the NBA while weighing less than 200 lb Vernon Maxwell was listed at 6'4 and 180 lb but his nickname Mad Max says everything you need to know during his career Maxwell was fighting everybody guards centers opponents teammates and even Spectators and while he was in Houston Max got into a heated argument with teammate Hakeem alaguan and nearly stabbed him to death but Mad Max didn't stop there because in
2000 when he played for Seattle Mad Max wanted to beat up another teammate Gary Payton Vernon wanted to fight pton so bad that he ended up hurting two of his teammates who tried to be peacemakers and this next guy also dabbled in MMA but he also happens to be the most physically dominant player of all time during his prime Shack Wade between 330 and 370 lb and yet he could move like a ballet dancer his combination of size strength and Agility was unmatched and nobody could stop the Shaq attack Not only was Shaq dominant he
was also vicious towards his opponents I mean this guy was a a force he was mean he was nasty the morning after you played with Shaq it always felt like you were in a fight you were sore from head to toe Nazar Muhammad you're looking at him like the fear that you might get is he's doing that full speed thing am I really going to try and take a charge on right like Father Time guarded shck only player ever to not shoot anything outside of the paint and dominate and when it comes to Shaq's deer
friend ofy on Inside the NBA it's safe to say he had little temper as well Charles Barkley was an undersized big man standing at only 6'6 but he was athletic extremely physical and wasn't backing down from anybody Barkley's lists of fights and on court incidents is extremely long starting with this forearm knockdown or that time when he single-handedly fought the bad boy Pistons Barkley's career was even in Jeopardy at one point because he was not only fighting on the court but also getting into brawls with civilians like that time in 1997 when he got arrested
after throwing a man through a glass window at at a bar or in 1991 when Sir Charles infamously spat on a young girl sitting in the crowd while aiming to spit on someone else when you combine that with all the fighting cursing and Trash Talk Chuck was one of the baddest to ever lay him up but how about being one of the craziest Ron arest served an 86 game suspension for the most gruesome incident in NBA history but that was just one of his many incidents on the court from the moment he arrived in the
league in 1999 until he won a championship with Kobe in 2010 our test was one of the most physical and aggressive Defenders that nobody wanted to play against in 2001 when Jordan was prepping for his second unretirement our test broke his ribs in a pickup game but beyond being a world-class Defender and a defensive player of the year Rod instilled fear in opponents because was a wild man arest drank alcohol before and even during games and he'd always play on the edge of getting ejected in 2003 he nearly fought Pat Riley and the whole Miami
Heat bench and that same year in a game against the Knicks got so mad that he destroyed some poor cameraman's equipment you'd think that he'd calm down after serving his suspension for the malice at the palace but our test just continued to punch people in the face in 2007 Artest had to spend 20 days in jail for another off Court incident because he beat up his wife but despite changing his name to meta world peace in 2011 his old habits remained just as James Harden a decade before our test started punching people on NBA courts
one particular bully was more terrifying than anybody Charles Oakley came into the league in 1985 and he quickly gained a reputation for being an enforcer when you needed a hard foul Oakley was there when a fight broke out between players Oak was right in the middle of it in 1989 he squared up against Xavier McDaniel another colorful character who could easily be on this list in the 1996 preseason Oakley and Barkley got tangled up on a rebound and Oakley tossed Barkley to the floor didn't matter that it was preseason as both players immediately started swinging
and got ejected during the 1997 playoffs Oak got into a fight with Alonzo Morning and next year these two hotheads got into it again in 2000 Oakley punched Clippers guard Jeff McKinnis after a dispute over a mutual romantic interest Oakley didn't even wait for the game to start he punched mckinness during a pregame shoot but maybe the biggest ass whooping Oakley ever dealt was that of Tyrone Hill who Oakley beat up over a gambling debt even after he retired from the League Oak wasn't done fighting as there were several reports of him beating up people
who dared to step up to him however Oakley wasn't all brute and no heart and he's the main reason one other scary guy even made it to the NBA when he was a high school kid Ben Wallace attended Charles Oakley's basketball camp and Oakley being Oakley punched him in the face got the ball dried to the basket bam B me in the lip you know split my jum because he showed no fear and played with tenacious energy Oakley immediately fell in love with Wallace's game and he recommended him to his Alma moer Virginia Union University
without Oakley Big Ben might have never played in the NBA but once he made the league he showed immediately that he was made of the same material as his mentor at 6'9 Wallace was the shortest Center in the league but they called him Big Ben for a reason see Ben was a fitness freak who never left the gym and could bench 400 lb due to his muscular body mean face and crazy afro nobody was messing with him and it didn't end well for the ones who tried honorable mention goes to his teammate Rasheed Wallace a
guy who couldn't control his anger and who played like a ticking Time Bomb Sheed was a walking technical fowl and he's the all-time leader in TCH in a season with 41 but two walles are not the baddest Detroit big men of all time that title belongs to Bill lambir and Rick Mahorn who put the bad in the bad boy Pistons there wasn't an NBA player in the80s who wasn't punched elbowed or shown to the floor by Detroit's big men and they long had a reputation for being the dirtiest players ever especially lamb beer while Mahorn
was setting hard screens and throwing punches me i' let to play defense I like to bump and bang I guess and that's what basically has been my job lame beer was also no notorious for planting his feet in the player's Landing space which resulted in plenty of ankle injuries never really ever like land beer in any social situation no yeah and uh it's because he's a dirty player and the final part of the bad boys front Court Trio played the hardest of them all Dennis Rodman was called the Worm but his other nickname Dennis the
Menace probably suits him even better playing with unlimited energy Rodman would get in opponent's faces he' trip them annoy them and not let them breathe what I'm seeing the battle between these two guys they're fighting giving it everything they got Dennis wasn't the scariest player ever but he was certainly one of the most irritating and physically difficult to play against nobody had an easy night against Rodman and this next player was far from the biggest or the strongest yet nobody wanted to mess with him not even Shaq standing at 66 and 220 lb he may
not look like a Bruiser but Jerry Stackhouse was a bad man and somebody you didn't want to get angry stack House's fists have a long list of NBA faces on their resume in 1996 he landed a couple of big Haymakers on Jeff Hornet during a game in 97 stack punched Allen Iverson in the face in practice who was one of his best friends of the Sixers however if you think that stack only went after little guys think twice in 99 stack house beat the hell out of 6' 10 Christian lner over a gambling debt but
the karrass of his fighting career happened in 2005 when he brutally beat down Jazz rookie Kirk Snyder after the game in which Snider provoked stack house Jerry asked his equipment manager for a track suit so he wouldn't mess up his suit he then walked to the Jazz bus and put a SmackDown on Snider we were in the game he gave me a cheap shot I just kind of lost it I wasn't worried about the game anymore and I just waited for him in the tunnel after which Arena security testified that Snyder received a severe beating
treating it like any other day at the office stack house returned to the locker room calmly handed over the tracksuit to the equipment manager and put on his suit and tie like nothing happened in the 2006 finals after he fouled Shaq super hard nobody from the heat said a thing thing to Jerry and even Shaq just walked away and the last but not least scary person on this list will always be remembered for his violence and not for his four All-Star appearances it's Latrell Sprewell whose career low light is the 1997 choking of PJ carisimo
his coach on the Golden State Warriors carisimo yelled at spre well to try a little harder in practice and wanted him to put a little mustard on his passes spree was in a bad mood that day and something triggered him to attack his coach Latrell threatened to kill his coach and started dragging him backward by the throat like a ragd doll proceeding to choke out Carly s for a good 10 seconds before he got pulled away by his teammates after he spent 10 minutes in the locker room spree still wasn't satisfied and came back to
attack his coach again because of apparent marks on Kimo's neck the NBA issued an investigation and suspended spre well for 68 games without pay but this wasn't the only beating of spr's career in 1995 he beat up teammate Jerome KY and then returned to practice with a 2x4 threatening to kill kiry then to top it off in 2002 he came to the Nicks practice camp with a broken hand which he broke after an assault on his yacht and before we finish this off here's a couple of honorable mentions of the scariest guys ever there's Carl
Malone the alltime leader in technical flows and The Unofficial all-time leader in elbow's Throne then there's Kenyan Martin who made a career out of being tougher and meaner than his opponents Kevin Garnett made most rookies lives a living hell Ivan Johnson was called Ivan the ter terrible and made people uncomfortable just by his presence and The Two Hosts of the all smoke podcast were no strangers to a fist fight Javaris Crittenden Anthony Mason David West Quincy AC and Udonis Hassam all deserve a mention as well if you think we forgot somebody please let us know
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