As if to acknowledge that it is time to be more demanding, coach Don Nelson says getting Bradley to do what is needed for the Mavs to succeed ?is like pulling teeth,?? and that public pronouncement may be the last button Nellie has to push: It is time to call Shawn out, to grab him by the lapels, to embarrass this religious, passive family man into performing ? to find out if he?s also a proud man.
     It is time for the firecracker.
     The apologies and the excuses have worn thinner than Shawn?s forearms ? even for those of us who started the Shawn Bradley Patience Club back on February 17, 1997, the day he arrived in Dallas, when he was, unfairly, an NBA punchline at just 24. I argued then (and still believe) that when it?s said and done, Bradley will be remembered as a very effective center whose Erector-Set-being-dismantled-by-a-preschooler awkwardness was nothing more than a curious sidebar.
     But the more he tries to defend himself so feebly for being what Nellie is calling ?a non-factor,?? the more and more difficult it gets for me to defend Shawn, as much as I still believe, as much as I like him personally.