Of all the offensive and insulting things that can happen in sports—hard fouls, spitting, pinching, crotch grabs, slapping, snot rockets, insulting an opponent's mother, mean looks, threats of violence, full-on fights, and Korean baseball-style bat flips—I'm not sure any top the non-handshake. I know, I know, just about everything I listed is actually worse than a non-handshake, but on the other hand, try and find an article about Iowa's 84-73 win over North Dakota that doesn't lead with a headline about the Handshake That Wasn't before discussing it in minute detail. There aren't any (this one included).Here's what happened: The final minute of the game in Iowa City was chippy, despite Iowa's 11-point lead. There was a technical foul by Iowa guard Jordan Bohannon, followed by a hard foul by North Dakota guard Quinton Hooker. With a few seconds left on the clock, Iowa's Nicholas Baer managed to steal the ball under the North Dakota net. He held it, waiting for the last few seconds to tick off, only for North Dakota's Corey Baldwin to snatch the ball and try and hit a last minute layup.Baldwin failed. Cue the madness:… and Messi and Ronaldo skipping formalities after Classico …… and classy, 18-0 The Perfect Season (TM) Tom Brady refusing a handshake from Eli Manning before the 2008 Super Bowl …… given what happened in said Super Bowl, perhaps Brady should have waited until after the game.
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None of this is new. Non-handshakes have been producing visceral reactions and hot take commendations for as long as we've had sports—in part because they threaten the character-building, man-molding, Rudyard Kipling-stiff-upper-lip, What About The Kids? role we've collectively assigned to the otherwise unremarkable task of throwing a ball through a hoop, and in part because they're just so gloriously petty and passive-aggressive. In fact, a 1991 non-handshake between the Detroit Pistons and Chicago Bulls was such a big deal that people were still talking about it 22 years later:For those of you who can't get enough, here's a few more, starting with LeBron James refusing a handshake with the Pistons after the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals …North Dakota, down 11, tried to beat the buzzer.
Fran McCaffery wasn't a fan, so he had Iowa walk off the court. — Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork)December 21, 2016
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