Is it kinda funny that Kobe shot more FT's then our entire team!?!?!

[Mulli]

This board has become almost 100% unreadable. Can we set up a different forum for these silly games?

That post made it unreadable?

 

[dreamcastrocks]

That post made it unreadable?

You went overboard. Any sane person can see that.

 

[jbeecham]

This board has become almost 100% unreadable. Can we set up a different forum for these silly games?

I agree, between this stuff and the other thread that's just gibberish with things like idkwtfuas

 

[az1965]

How'd you handle that 17 point lead you had against us in game 6 last year? Pretty well I think, right?

That's exactly what spinless is... jumping up and down celebrating beating up a single legged one... we have beaten this to death but I guess Mavs fans are pretty dumb like Lakers fans.

 

[Mulli]

My sincerest apologies for interrupting such a thoughtful Kobe discussion.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

My sincerest apologies for interrupting such a thoughtful Kobe discussion.

Kobe is a jelly bean sandwich.

 

[Muggum]

I was at the game last night in LA, and the Laker fans around me were going CRAZY with RAGE at the refs the entire game. Screaming stuff like, 'You've got s#$t in your eyes!' and 'How much are they paying you?!' You would have thought they were having the greatest crime of the 21st century perpetrated against them.

It made me smile. They went to the line 28 times to our 12, and somehow the refs were blatantly screwing THEM?!

My point is this... everyone always thinks the refs are screwing them. I agree with David Stern. The lion's share of the calls are good. A few are bad. Players and fans need to stop being such pathetic homers and take responsibility for the team's failures. There are no better refs than these hiding somewhere on the planet. They're human. They're highly trained. And they're doing the best they can.

Mark Cuban is the WORST. The biggest baby in league history.

Try being objective once in your life.

 

[jbeecham]

http://myespn.go.com/profile/truehoop?archiveId=23&entryId=125

The Lakers WON that game?

April 27, 2007 10:32 AM

I closed my eyes in the second quarter -- mainly to shield them from all that day-glo orange and yellow -- but when I finally woke up I was not worried that I might have missed a Laker victory built on Kwame Brown heroics. (Was it divine intervention?)

Alas, I should have stayed up.

My email inbox this morning is rife with, you guessed it, referee conspiracy theories! I'm disinclined to go there. I mean, every time a team loses a game, in any sport, at any level, there are people who want to blame it on the referees. Even in my rec league, where the referees can barely conspire to show up at the same time and remember the rules, let alone fix the game one way or another.

Common sense will tell you that a HUGE percentage of those people are just full of it.

But at the same time, there is real TV money on the line in these playoff games. Did the league want to keep Kobe Bryant around a little longer to goose some ratings? Did the Lakers get favorable treatment?

I have no idea. As you know, I didn't see any of the important parts of the game.

If you wanted to at least make an educated guess, you'd have to identify some games that you suspect the league would want to have go a certain way, and then see how the foul calls in those games might have varied from the patterns set throughout the season.

Which is pretty much what Adam Hoff of WhatIfSports has done.

He looked at last night's Laker game, which he theorized would be called in favor of L.A., as well as the second games of the Dallas and San Antonio series, which he theorized would be called in both cases for the Texans. (Can't say I agree: what ratings driven business person would rig a game to ensure the advancement of tiny market, boring play-style San Antonio over supernovas Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony?)

Hoff found that the teams he thought the NBA would want to win got to the free throw line way more than you would have expected based on their regular season patterns.

I'm not totally convinced by the science here. It's a tiny sample size. And really it may not be saying anything other than home teams get more calls, which I think we all kind of knew anyway. (Hoff acknowledges he would have ideally derived his baseline -- each team's anticipated number of trips to the free throw line -- from their 41 home or away games, not all 82 lumped together, to adjust for this.)

But it's worth noting, because the disparities Hoff found? They're pretty huge.

In the three "games of interest" in which the NBA would have a vested interest in seeing the home team win -- either to tighten up a series, keep a favorite alive, or squeeze a few more contests out of a big star -- the "gaps" have been +11.4, +9.4, and +16.3. Obviously, the desperation of the home team (leading to more aggressive play on offense), the excitement of the crowd, and other factors play a role. But those gaps are enormous. On average, the home team of interest got 12.4 more free throw attempts than 82 games worth of data would project.

Based on his first three games worth of analysis, Hoff's predicting Miami will be going to the line a lot tonight. Something to watch.

 

[elindholm]

Obviously, the desperation of the home team (leading to more aggressive play on offense), the excitement of the crowd, and other factors play a role.

Ya think?

Look, the subjectivity of NBA refereeing is old news. As many have posted, there are games once in a while that really make you scratch your head, but last night wasn't close to being one of them. The Suns played like ass and were lucky to have a shot to steal it at the end.

 

[Mulli]

shun

 

[Scot1]

Is it worth mentioning that the old adage "The aggressive team gets the calls" it itself evidence of bias--not against a particular team, but against the defense. Pushing off, and jumping into other players, ought to be called as fouls much more often than they are. I've seen Amare jump way backwards and still get called for a foul on a player in front of him who initiates contact.

One consequence is that the refs have extra freedom to favor some players by calling these pseudo fouls inconsistently. My impression is Kobe takes advantage of this a lot--Bird did, too.