[cyanutopia]

I don't see it as going against "gracious professionalism", as long as your objectives are only to temporarily disable, not PERMANENTLY disable, the robots of other teams. I think, however, that unless you've truly perfected the forklift operation and know your opposition well enough, you run a greater risk of heavily damaging an opponent robot, so much so that it may be deemed as malicious play.
And as for picking your team for an alliance partner, it would really depend on what other robots get picked---if the robots that get picked are all quick and most have tethers, then I probably wouldn't pick your team. Teams like #16 (baxter bomb squad) are so quick you probably couldn't lift 'em up even if you had all the practice in the world, and those with tethers would still score 10 points regardless of having a foot (or wheel) on the ground.