You must be crazy if you think that was a flagrant two. Stuckey fell to the floor body first, and his body took the impact before his CHIN touched the floor. He feigned some monstrous whiplash there, and jerked his head up and down like he was bouncing on flubber. And critically, he landed on his CHIN but rolled around on the floor clutching his FOREHEAD. And he rolls around pretending to be hurt when it was merely a hard foul. It would not have even been enough to get him winded for more than half a minute, I assure you. They’re tougher than that even in the WNBA.

And yes, Zonaflash, midair at full speed should be flagrant two. I rip on Shaq’s elbow-fu and occasional travel every now and then but there is simply too much evidence proving that it is NOT a flagrant two. There was no body collision whatsoever, Shaq got the ball and the arm and pulled. The usual prerequisite in defining flagrant is body contact/collision. And more critically, as you said, hitting someone in mid-air constitutes a flagrant 2; Stuckey was nowhere near mid-air. He was only in mid-stride. He was just going into his one-two and considering the distance from the ground, that does not come anywhere close to qualifying as a mid-air collision. Ever. If you make this sort of pussy swipe a Flagrant Two, you will need to establish Flagrant Three, Four, and Five for the REAL flagrant fouls.

Obviously you’re dramatising Shaq’s attack on Stuckey. Come playoff time, there’ll be many incidents of Flagrant 3s and 4s, with malicious intent, tons more physical impact, in mid-air/full momentum, with lots of potential danger and damage in terms of injury, and they will be classified as Flagrant 1s, with the coaches and players defending themselves talking about “I didn’t wanna hurt nobody” and how it was an “honest basketball play”, as opposed to this weak foul being needlessly blown out of proportion and scandalised.

In fact, if maybe a guy the size of Diaw committed a similar foul no one would even imagine that this could ever amount to anything more than a personal foul. Shaq himself has been victimised by much more brutality from opposing teams then he could possibly dish out. You always get away with much more in beating up on big men and it’s probably the small-guy vs hulking-giant bias that deluded and misled the referees in making such a monumental error in categorising the foul.