Grace White of Fox 29 San Antonio unveiled the haircut that became the talk of NBA fans Wednesday night, telling the tale of Patrick Gonzalez, a Woodlake Hills middle school student who really loves the Spurs, specifically, his fellow redhead, Spurs forward/center Matt Bonner.

As you can see from White’s photo above, Gonzalez had an artful portrait of Bonner shaved into the back of his head. It includes the part-time player’s face, his hand, and the suggestion of the ball. It “shows him aiming for a three-pointer,” Gonzalez told White. 

But when Gonzalez got to school on Wednesday, his first-period teacher deemed the display of fandom a “distraction.” She called the principal.

The boy’s mother, Rose Gonzalez, told White she had come in to the school office to ask permission. But a spokesperson for Judson ISD told White, “there was no permission that was given … whether it’s the Spurs, whether it’s our Cowboys, whether it’s anything that obviously people support, it doesn’t matter.”

Threatened with an in-school suspension, Gonzalez said he planned to shave off the design before returning to the classroom Thursday.

“It’s the playoffs,” Rose Gonzalez told White, an explanation any sports fan would endorse. 

White’s 9 p.m. newscast story was almost immediately picked up by Kelly Dwyer of the Yahoo! hoops blog Ball Don’t Lie, where it had inspired over 4,000 comments as of 2 a.m. on Thursday morning. 

“A smart teacher would have him go to the front of the room, model his do, say why he got it, then have him take a seat and get on with the business at hand,” wrote one commenter, Nononono. “I am so glad I am out of the education field.” 

“This blatant disregard for the rules regarding distracting haircuts that support professional teams currently in the playoffs must come to an end!,” snarked Jeff Greenwell, aka “The Last Angry Fan,” at Business Insider.

Or, and hear me out school officials at Judson I.S.D., maybe, just maybe you could let the kid’s haircut slide because the Spurs are rolling in the NBA playoffs and really, how offensive or distracting could a Matt Bonner haircut be?

About as offensive or distracting as Matt Bonner in real life, and that ain’t squat.

In fact, as Dwyer noted, in an NBA that’s full of players who came straight from high school or a single year of college, Bonner is a former University of Florida academic All-American. He’s also known for his discerning taste in Austin music. In other words, a role model. 

(Update: After this morning’s shootaround, Bonner told Mike Monroe of Spurs Nation, “Obviously, I’m hooking Patrick up with signed everything. But we’re also trying to get him to the game tonight.”)

But Gonzalez is not even close to the first Spurs fan to come up with such a tribute. As Jeff Garcia of Project Spurs reported, just last week someone in San Antonio got a “Tony Parker,” complete with “TP” and MVP” on each side, plus the collar of a Spurs jersey. 

San Antonio barber “Rob the Original” specializes in this sort of thing; watch his YouTube of the Parker ‘do below: