Why I hate Chad?
I've been stewing over this post for a long time, and now I am going to add my comment to chad's post from below, within here. It's about refereeing. Two points. If you don't care about chad's point, read the Second post. I think it's really interesting
1) Chad, you are wrong about the Pistons being a dirty team, and the evidence that there's no coincidence that "a key player on the opposing team always gets hurt against them" is pretty poor. Looking only at the last two series, Shaq was hurt coming in and Wade injured himself on a crossover attributable, say the commentators, to the fact that he's played 100 games at breakneck speed; no dirty play. Manu's injury happens in basketball. He tried to run by someone; it's unfortunate, but it wasn't dirty. Watch the strips they had close-up, especially the one of Wallace (and Hunter) on Udrih at midcourt. It was not a foul. Hand all over the ball. You'll see that with most of their reach-ins. If you want to talk about dirty playing, watch the "Costas Now" interview with Reggie Miller from this past week where miller demonstrates 1)how to draw a three-point shooting foul 2)how to draw a fake charge while pulling the offensive player's hand into your body. And every guard uses their off-hand to push the defense away (I was irate (irate!) at Damon Jones in the last series. Chauncey is stronger and a helluva player; that's how he gets by. More to the point, the Pistons were near the bottom in fouls/games this year.
2) The initial intention of this post was to note that refs have a much, much greater impact on NBA games than they do in any other sport. The notion of a disqualification really doesn't pertain to any other sport besides basketball (unless you do something crazy that merits two personal fouls in football, or you argue with the ump in baseball). In basketball, as we all well know, you are only given six fouls. Mind you, you're guarding the best athletes in the world, you have to run around picks, you're tired from also cutting on offense, and if your hand slips once (or, more to the point, doesn't slip but the ref perceives it does), you get a foul. Two cheap fouls and your out for the first quarter. Three and you're done for the half (risk-reward of playing in crunchtime). The point is, any ref could have called that steal by wallace or some of the other Piston strips fouls, and the game would have turned completely. From personal experience, I really, really hate having referees (granted my refs don't train for the position). Two points. 1) don't bet on basketball, b/c I honestly think it's too much out of the players' hands. Especially college basketball, with only 5 fouls. 2) real basketball is where you call your own fouls and there is no such thing as an "and-1".
posted by aaron @ 8:23 AM
3 Comments:
I'm not saying that Pistons opponents always get hurt on dirty plays, I am just saying that when a team plays basketball like it's a football game, people are much more likely to get injured.
But I agree that the refs are a huge issue in basketball. If you look at this series (as Niv pointed out to me) they rotated crews for games 1-4 and then started over with crew 1 for game 5...and the Spurs won both of those games. Tightly called games open things up, eventually, and allow the more skilled, finesse team to win. Loosely called games tend to tighten things up and allow the bigger, stronger, more tenacious team to win. Which you think is better, I suppose, is a matter of personal choice.
And I hate you too
we want violet palmer.
And your point makes sense. Except for that it presupposes that the spurs are a more "skilled" team, which is highly debateable. Parker is quicker but billups is easily (i would contend more, based on shooting ability from the foul and three point lines) skilled. Duncan is absurd, but everyone and their mother has noted for 10 years that Sheed is skilled enough to be one of the best, if not the best PF in the game. Rip is a skilled shooter (like Reggie Miller), much like Manu is a skilled slasher. Ben and Nazr are "skilled" in their own ways, and wallace doesn't play football rough, he just plays well. Bowen is a tight, tough defender, much less skilled than tayshaun who can both play offense and defense. Look at the benches, and Dice is a skilled offensive player. Barry is a shooter. Nesterovic is soft (skilled?). . .
The point is, you see the point. Quit talking out of your ass in generalities
I was going to say what Niv said, but Niv said it already.
Post a Comment
<< Home