Bonzi Wells flips out, then flips the bird

Portland Trail Blazers guard Bonzi Wells just can't help himself.

First, he throws a towel onto the court during the first half of Monday night's home loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.

A short time later, he throws a water bottle onto the court.

Then, for good measure, during a timeout with 1:27 left to play in the game, he flips the bird to a couple of fans who were heckling Rasheed Wallace.

I guess you could call it a temper-tantrum trifecta.

I'm beginning to wonder if the Blazers are not a basketball team, but a preschool class.

Wells has got nothing on my five-year-old daughter. She can throw a humdinger of a tantrum with the best of them, but if she had thrown a towel and a water bottle in frustration as Wells did, she would've gotten a swat on the rear or at the very least, a timeout.

There's an idea, maybe Wells deserves a good spanking.

Unfortunately, Wells gets away with his boorish behavior with a slap on the wrist, which in the NBA equals a $10,000 fine.

When asked if he flipped off a fan during the loss, Wells said: "I don't remember nothing like that, but if I did, I was probably wrong. But, I don't remember doing nothing like that. I black out sometimes."

Hmmm. He doesn't remember doing it, but if he did it, he didn't really mean to do it.

Bonzi, can you run that by me again, because I can't believe my ears.

What a load of crapola. I mean, I know the guy is struggling this season, but has it affected his ability to remember? Come on.

Bonzi, you better keep that finger warm, because you're going to get a lot of mileage out of it once every fan in the NBA knows they can get under your skin.

And Wells isn't the only Trail Blazers player who makes fans want to blaze a trail to the nearest trashcan to heave.

Zach Randolph, who has supplanted Wallace as Portland's best player, has some anger management issues. Just ask Ruben Patterson and his eye socket.

Wallace is the king of the NBA in boorish behavior. If there were a Hall of Fame for infantile outbursts, he would be the first inductee. We all know what he is capable of in the realm of temper tantrums when he puts his mind to it. And he never says two words to the media before or after games. Actually, he sometimes says two words: "No comment."

Can you believe Wells and Wallace share the title of team captain with Damon Stoudamire? If ever there was a case of the lame leading the blind on an NBA team, this is it.

Even Maurice Cheeks, the highest-paid babysitter in America, can't keep a handle on his emotions sometimes. Local sportswriters who cover the Blazers have written that, during games, Cheeks will carry on conversations with fans behind the Blazers bench -- at home and on the road. Some say the banter is constant. The chatter occasionally concerns whether a player will follow his directions. And when the player does not (which is most of the time these days), he will turn to the fans and say, "see?" Or words to that affect. But you get the picture.

To this day, Cheeks laments that he wasn't given the opportunity this past summer to interview for the Sixers' vacant head coaching position. According to a published report, Cheeks still harbors dreams of coaching the Sixers one day. After Monday night, I bet he wishes that day was Tuesday.

Take that, Blazers fans. You've got a coach who doesn't want to be in Portland (and who can blame him?), and a bunch of players who act like two year olds.

Of course, we already know how Wells feels about the fans in Portland after his interview with Sports Illustrated two years ago. In the SI interview, he flipped the bird to Blazers fans in print, so it came as no surprise when I learned of the middle finger he laid on the hecklers the other night.

I used to be a Blazers fan. I had season tickets from 1990 to 2002. I loved Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, Jerome Kersey and Buck Williams. But it all went horribly wrong in the mid-1990s, when the Bob Whitsitt-regime rode into town. As fast as you could say "Rip City," Whitsitt had jettisoned the good guys out of town and brought in misfits, malcontents and lawbreakers.

There's a scene in the 1976 movie "Network" where one of the characters tells a nationwide television audience to open their windows and shout, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

That's exactly how I feel today. Three games into the season, I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. I'm mad at Wallace. I'm mad at Wells. I'm mad at Cheeks. And I'm maddest at the new Blazers management team of Steve Patterson and John Nash for not trading away some of these players who are making me mad as hell.

Heck, I'm even mad at Randolph for having diarrhea during Monday night's game. I can sympathize with Randolph's diarrhea, because the Blazers are starting to become a pain in the rear of this former Blazermaniac.

C.S. Wilson is a regular contributor to eSports Media Group and FanStop.com. He can be reached at christopher.wilson@netzero.com.