While I consider Serena Williams the greatest female player of all time and admire her tremendously, I submit that even in our current wound too tight politically correct climate it would be overreacting to ban for life the most talented tennis player of the mid 1970s for making a tasteless but hardly Don Rickles-esque joke about chocolate and while milk.

Apparently, Nastase also berated and insulted members of the British Davis Cop team and so overall he has earned a suspension from tennis but not a lifetime ban.

But make no mistake - in his prime Nastase was the consummate player and showman and was ranked number one in the world for over a year for that reason.

I'll never forget the show he and Jimmy Connors put on in a 1982 exhibition match at Maple Leaf Gardens.  Nastase launched a majestic lob curving around the right side of the hockey scoreboard high above the net and somehow landing on the left side in bounds.  

Pure tennis genius.  Connors could only laugh and applaud.