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
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