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Although officially a non-contact sport, basketball, especially NBA style, can be a dangerous game with frequent physical contacts. Each night basketball struggles between being a clean, finesse game and a rugged game with football-like bumping and shoving. Sometimes tempers boil over and a let’s fight at basketball game mindset takes over. Though this can happen in any game, some confrontations have gone on to be the most famous NBA fights. Here’s a look back at the five best basketball fights.

Shaquille O'Neal has been called a lot of names during his career: “Big Aristotle,” “Most Dominant Ever,” “Diesel,” and many others. The unique thing about Shaquille O'Neal is that he gave himself these nicknames and many others, often outwitting the journalists who write about him with his playful and jocular personality, which is one of a kind. The Shaquille O'Neal life has had a one-of-a-kind trajectory from military high school to the NBA to his affinity for being a volunteer sheriff. Shaquille O'Neal basketball is also unique: a dominant center who developed a mighty drop-step move which often ended in a slam dunk.

His airness Michael Jordan was in a league of his own throughout his career. Even before going pro or rolling out his exclusive Air Jordan's, Michael was special. His time in his high school and college were remarkable by how unremarkable they were. Cut from the varsity Laney High School basketball team and later overshadowed at UNC by their star James Worthy, Jordan overcame struggles to show up when it mattered. Michael Jordan basketball history truly began in the NCAA finals during his college freshman year. UNC was playing future NBA star Patrick Ewing’s Georgetown Tarheels, when Jordan took over the game scoring 16 points with 9 rebounds and the game winning shot with 18 second left in the game.

At just 48 minutes of game time, the NBA basketball game is the shortest of all the major sports with a game clock that theoretically does not stop. Of course, it does stop quite a bit for fouls, timeouts, commercials and quarter breaks and it can have overtime periods if the score remains tied at the end of the game. The longest basketball game ever set the record longest basketball game by going into 6 overtime periods. Each overtime period adds 5 minutes to the game.

As the NBA season heads into overtime in 2009, there are many young rookies who show that they promising young players. Often rookie seasons can make or break the career of an NBA star: fumble out of the gate and your minutes get cut and you get buried on the bench and cut. It adds up to a lot of pressure just as a rookie is already dealing with the increased speed and size of pro ball. In 2009 promising young players from every position answered the call and should have excellent careers from here on out.

In the NBA, basketball coaching strategies are important to the outcome of the game. Substitutions, defensive or offensive plays required skilled players to understand and to be able to execute the plays. That is why players need to train in order to be physically prepared to execute basketball strategies when it comes to game time.

Doc Rivers career so far in the NBA has been about helping out: dishing assists as a player in the league and getting along well with players as their coach. But lately Doc has not been helping the officials or himself with repeated tirades after Doc Rivers Celtics take a loss in the regular season or the playoffs. So far in the 2009 NBA season and playoffs, Doc has collected $65,000 in fines.