I don't think Ron went after the ball but it certainly wasn't a flagrant 2. If he had gone after the ball I would judged it as a normal foul. I might be incorrect but that's the way that I see it.
They way I saw it I think there was no doubt he was going to after the ball. More so than Rafer, Fisher, Rondo, Kobe, Vujacic.
Should have been a personal foult, but given the way everything else is being called, flagrant 1 is consistent. As to refs giving the lakers favorable treatment, please. At half time, there were more than twice as many fouls called against the lakers, and 3 times as many free throw attempts by the rockets. It only caught up with the intentional fouling at the end. Artest is a nutjob, and given his past, he needs to keep himself in check. that's the penalty you pay for beating on fans. He should know better.
Still made the wrong call... a REGULAR foul should have been assessed. I'm not being picky, but that was just stupidity when they decided to call a flagrant 2. It wasn't even a flagrant foul when 3 different people had hit Pau Gasol...
They had to call it flagrant 1 because if not the league would be looking dumb if they just call it a personal foul and a slap in the face on the refs for looking dumb.
If the contact is considered excessive and potentially dangerous, the league will hand out a flagrant. It's no so much about malicious intent. It might be borderline in this case, but I think flagrant-1 makes sense.
I'll live with the league calling it a Flagrant-1, even though it was nothing more than a good, hard playoff foul. What I want to know is, why wasn't Sasha Vujacic's foul on Von Wafer not upgraded to at least a Flagrant-1? That foul was much harder and more dangerous than Ron's foul on Gasol.
That contact was mostly created by Wafer. It could have been a flagrant, but it also could have been an offensive foul. By ruling it a regular foul, I think the refs sort of split the difference.
