Today, Payton and Kidd, good friends and two of the most commercially identifiable N.B.A. players, are embroiled in controversies that threaten to taint their images and further tarnish the game's.
New parties often flourish in Latvia until the messy business of fund-raising taints their image.
That is, until legislators start playing their "gut and amend" tricks in late summer as they frantically race toward final adjournment, further tainting their images.
But a tribunal appeals ruling in November, freeing two Croat generals convicted of crimes against Serbs, outraged many Serbs who had always viewed the tribunal as biased against them and as an instrument to taint their national image permanently.
Ms. Hill says, however, that men shouldn't worry that knitting will taint their macho images.
Semiautomatic firearms are actually not weapons, he said, unless someone chooses to hurt another person with them, and their image has been unfairly tainted by the news media.
Over all, the Giants sustained injuries to their bodies, wounds to their pride, damage to their playoff hopes and taint to their national image.
They feel it disrupts their process or can taint the authenticity of their images.
But papaya growers say the ordinance will still taint the image of their product and might lead to more incidents, such as one that occurred last month, in which vandals cut down their trees at night.
But will the lawsuit taint its image for the awards voters when they receive their ballots in mid-January?
They are hoping that the whiff of scandal does not taint his image so much as show public opinion how hounded their champion is.For, affairs apart, things have not looked so favourable for Mr Sarkozy's return since he was voted out of office two years ago.
