Chronic: Yes, Yao is tough to officate. But that old answer is not good enough

I agreed with the article. The pushing, the 2 hands on the back although the rule book clearly stated defender can only put one hand on the back of the player but all these have become part of the big men game. Defenders do these to all big men be it Dwight, Shaq and Yao. So it becomes part of the game and like it or not, the referees not gonna blow the whistle because of these. So the only way is to accept it!
What i can't stand though is the FLOP! I cannot understand why professional basketball referees cannot defferentiate a flop with a legit charge. Their excuse? The game is moving too fast. Come on. Yao is playing in slow motion his entire career yet the referees cannot tell! Sometimes i wonder the referees just wanna screw the big chinese fellow more than refereeing the game. This is what i cannot accept and stand with NBA referees!

 

That's the most important sentence in the whole article.

How many of us... in seeing that it was Palmer and Salvatore... knew that our bigs were going to have trouble?

I know when I noticed I quite literally groaned out loud.

That should never happen.

The refs should not be so visible that we know how it's going to be an issue before the game even starts or before the first quarter is less than five minutes in and the first questionable call is made.

 

It's almost as if the NBA doesn't want the game to be dominated by big men but guards.

 

Cmon NBA! Take your heads out of the sand and call a fair game for once. And please favoritism is not allowed.

 

It's true. Yao's playing in the wrong era for big men. It's "All Guards, All the Time" in the NBA these days. If you've been an NBA fan for any number of years, nothing NBA refs do should surprise you. Some are good, most are below average, a good deal completely incompetent, and a few are even on the take!! HA. Yao's been the victim of some of the most stupifyingly bad calls I've ever seen.

 

I knew Yao will be in foul trouble when Las Vegas predicts Rockets losing by 9 or more.

 

Is he saying Yao gets away with a lot of holding, grabbing and dislodging? I could swear its the other way around.

 

I'm going to assume that this was simply a mistype/brain fart here. If by good he means that he gets to work seemingly every big game 3 and game 7 every year, that's true, but it's only because you usually have to pay bribes for such piss-poor, biased officiating. Unlike Violet Palmer, who's so terrible at her job that the NBA can't even trust her to fix the games, Salvatore is the Michael Jordan of referees; you throw him out there and he's going to single-handedly will the big-market team down 2-0 to at least a game 6 all by himself. The 2006 finals were his "flu-game", the stuff of legends. To this date, the Miami Heat have only retired 3 numbers in their history: #23 for Michael Jordan, #13 for Dan Marino, and #15 for Bennett Salvatore.

 

stern wanted to up the scoring.

 

I've said this before, but when the league gets "the memo" Yao will suddenly start winning rings. I still do think it will happen, but the amount of abuse he's taking now is just ridiculous.

I started watching the NBA in the late 60's. I saw punches and elbows and it was a different game, but the players actually tried to legally play each other.

It's a rewarded thugfest now but people seem to love it.

 

i think the problem started with stern, who turned desperate after mj retired. time for stern to retire now imo. he's ruining the sport despite the international success. the nba needs a new direction.

 

Eh... if they allowed big men to be called like they did guards, then Yao would get 20 FTs a game at least, and would probably be bordering on Wilt Chamberlain level of greatness because now all the old things teams would do to keep him from scoring they would no longer do. The only thing they could do is front him, which requires two players.

 

this was printed in the 'Chronic'?

 

Agreed. What a boring read. Tell us news, not stuff we all know. I can't believe newspapers are stiill around after reading that.

 

the bottomline is that if the nba allowed the other big men in the league to play yao without helping them out, he'd average 30-35 ppg and that's not even remotely joking. he's too big and he's flat out a fantastic offensive player. he has a hook shot with both hands, he can shoot it and turn around and fade from either side of the court. he even has a spin move on occasion.

stern lets the referees give the defense leeway, probably even commands them to. there's no possible way that they're not aware of this, and they'll probably never do anything about it.

It's frustrating because obviously I want the rockets to do well, but yao is a great guy and a hardworker and he's being punished because of his size and frankly because of who he is.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by the "who he is" remark, but I think I agree with you.

I'd love to see Yao go home in the offseason (with or without a ring ) and promote his foundation with a simple paragraph:

"Please don't buy any NBA merchandise. Judge how hard I work and how I'm officiated and tell me what I nor my coaches don't know. Then make a plain t-shirt with "Yao Ming fights" and then give money to rebuild schools".

That'll work IMHO.

 

Chronicle is wrong. If the guy is on the ground, he is impeding the progress of someone going to the rim. I just saw them call it in another NBA game. Same thing happened, but the guy ended up on the ground when he tripped, but when the player drove to the basket, they had to call a foul.

 

Knowing who the refs will be prior to game is important for betting.

 

Interesting. So then it would probably be possible to make a loose list of referees who are known for calling bigs differently? I'd like to see something like that, just for my reference.