The main criticism of Lewis was his frequent suspensions. However, fans and teammates felt that he was given particularly unfair treatment from both umpires and the
tribunal. Lewis played much of his early football career prior to the AFL taking action against
racial abuse, and thus racial taunts from opposition players were a frequent source of provocation. Lewis has also been known for many unusual suspensions, including the most infamous case of biting
Todd Viney's finger in 1991. It’s now well known that this, amongst most of Lewis’s suspensions, where in the act of defence or retaliation for being directly targeted by opposition teams. At the time of the Viney case, Australian football legend
Ron Barassi defended Lewis, saying that he would have done the same thing if another man stuck his fingers in his mouth. Multiple previous opponents of Lewis, who targeted him with racial slurs and abuse to throw him off his game have since publicly apologised for their actions. Most notably former players
Dermott Brereton and
Gary Lyon during an episode of
The Footy Show in 2011 which Lewis was a guest. The AFL’s longest-serving coach,
Mick Malthouse, once wrote that Lewis was the most talented footballer to come out of Western Australia, and that if he had played under the AFL’s current-day stance against racial vilification and discrimination, he would have been a 300-game-plus player. Malthouse described the abuse Lewis copped from opposition players as "absolutely disgraceful": "I don't think eras have anything to do with it. Chris was reported on a couple of occasions. In my mind, I have no doubt he was vilified. We accepted it, and we have got a lot to pay for that, as a nation, as a league and as individuals. Football wore him down. From a young man, when I first went to that football club, who had a beautiful big smile, that became more and more tested through his career." ==Post-AFL Career==