You shouldn’t discount the effect of the limited Rockets’ rotation. Just like offensive holding in football, you can literally call a foul on every possession. But just like with late whistles on missed baskets, refs will often limit the foul calls to those in which the defender is clearly “beat”. So if it looks like you’re out of position when you foul, they’re more likely to call it than when you’re in a better defensive position (same in football, if you’re holding the guy while out of position, it’s called. If you’re holding while right in front of him, it won’t). So back to the rotation issue. Tired players are easier to stay in position on defensively and more likely to foul themselves when they’re on defense. Hence, you’re going to get a discrepancy in calls. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s poor team construction and poor style of play in the 4th quarters.
how do you explain the discrepancy right from the start ? you think we are tired to start the game ? come on man. they are getting a favorable whistle simple as that. the rockets have to do more than the thunder to win to try and make up for it.
you mean other than the 82 games we got those calls in the regular season and almost led the league in ft's?
game 3 was the only one with an obvious 1st quarter difference in foul calls. last game... Game 4 Q1 FTA Fouls Hou. 6 5 OKC 2 4
no you've missed the point, the "marquee matchup" of both LA teams is the money draw. and surely silver hopes that one goes 7 lol
I'd have to see the specific plays you're talking about where we should have received a foul call. In watching the game, nothing jumped out at me. OKC did a good job of not blatantly fouling.
that matchup would have happened no matter the outcome of OKC/HOU though, so why would anyone rig this series?
HOU was on track to sweep OKC. saying that HOU poses no threat to LAL is simply false. tiring HOU out w/ an extra 2-3 games prior to the 2nd round matchup definitely helps the cause likewise, a 43-19 FT disparity helps LAL finish quick and rest now
harden seemed to definitely get fouled on his drive with about 1:30 left in the game. okc certainly got lesser things called throughout the game. chris paul jumped into PJ tucker on a drive and flung up a free throw line jumper and got ft's. someone barely flicked cp3's arm on a drive and he flailed and got a 3 point play. if that's a foul then we're missing out. as i pointed out, we basically had to get 6 ft's early in the game because okc fouled us on 2 obvious 3's, but then we got either 3 or 4 ft's in the last 44 minutes of the game. an nba game has 100 subjective calls throughout the game. i'm sure you could steve javie your way into agreeing with every call the refs make, but we know refs make lots of calls on what they think they saw or by how someone reacted and sometimes they just miss calls. you expect these things to even out. it's very hard to believe the rockets shot 3 fewer ft's in a competitive playoff game than anyone else this entire playoffs and yet the refs were definitely calling things completely evenly. it's ok to say refs miss calls and they aren't always evenly distributed (we can argue why they missed them).
this play was a the 1:16 mark, when harden ends up on his ass after getting tripped up by schroeder on a drive into the paint (hard to tell if dort fouled him afterwards as well). he immediately yells at the baseline ref with both arms up. even end of the bench players in this league would typically get this call.
For the season: HOU: 26.1 vs 23.7(opp) OKC: 24.8 vs 19.6(opp) Just based off that and nothing else, I'd expect the following FTAs for each team when facing each other: HOU: 22.9 OKC: 24.3 Actual numbers this series (4 game sample): HOU: 17.5 OKC: 26.5
Playoff refs just change their tune with the Rocket's come post season. That Harden step back that was called a travel must have been premeditated. Our team has a lot of talent, we will adjust.
... says Tony Brothers... ... to Eric Gordon. Just to put it in perspective, if Eric Gordon drives 100x to the basket in one game, he's getting < 4 FTA for that game.
