I gotta say, that two offensive calls were horrible. Madsen just took a dive with the littlest touch. I heard its always the same ref that gives yao a bad time. I dunno, but tonight, I admit Yao struggled a bit, but the refs really jobbed him on several calls. I think that last turn around he hit in the lane was supposed to be a foul.
Yao is only as good as the officials, as he is fouled on nearly every play. Sometimes he gets the calls, drops 35, 15 from the line and is the best center in the league. Other times he gets no calls, scores 12, and is labeled as soft by the entire fan base. He is, what he is. Tonight just happened to be one of the tough nights, but we still got the win, almost everyone important is healthy, and we are really starting to look good.
Why rockets beat every opponent so hard and usually with a narrow margin, no matter who the opponent is,weak or strong?
a 2-handed push is not a "touch" and is not allowed under the rules and should be called every single time. and when faced up, you can't touch an offensive player when he's shooting. it's ok not to call every time, but the refs have to be consistent to both teams. and this was not the case last night.
Since you brought up the "objectivity" subject, let's be objective here. The purpose of a fan bbs is NOT helping anyone win games, win playoffs, win championships. No matter how much you value your opinions, it's just bbs discussions, between fans. We are here because we love basketball, we love Rockets, not because we are supposed to or we can help them win from some posts on bbs. You are absolutely right, complainging about refs here won't bring us wins, neither can any complaints about Rafer's floater, Yao's softness, TMac's shooting habit, etc etc. By that logic, we shouldn't be posting anything. We were discussing the game, how Yao could have played better, or should have played better; how refs greatly limited his performance; how Rockets won despite all the negatives. Then, you pull this "no, refs are not biased towards Yao, and discussing it is useless".
Haha, Nice. First of all, Yao doesn't get some of the calls because he's not athletic enough, refs think he is not going to make that play because he's not athletic enough to do that, just like Battier got that offensive fault call the other night against the Kings, because Refs anticipated if he got the reb it must because he committed an fault. In other cases, Refs think Yao being as big as he is, should be able to absorb the contact. Basically, they are not calling the game as it is. Second of all, some of you guys should stop playing fantacy basketball. You can not wish Yao was somebody else in some matchups, while he gives you anchor to your offense most of the night. Rockets offense totally breaks down a lot of nights when Yao is not in the game. I know, wouldn't it be nice if Yao is Yao in most of the nights, but just so subtly turns into a Camby, an Amare, a DH, a Shaq occasionally? Make him as deadly in the midrange as B millar while we are at it.
the marcus camby comments are making me sick. camby averages 11 ppg and 12.3 boards a game. Yao averages 20 / 10. camby gets 3.1 offensive boards to yao's 2.7. If you've ever watched a rox game you know that Yao lets a lot "gimmie" rebounds go to his teammates. He's not looking to beef up his numbers to look good. they should not be mentioned in the same sentence.
seriously, any player do that to manu or ak47, it's an offensive foul too. flopping is an art. some players master it. our players gotta know who the damn floppers are and if they're gonna flop, make it a hard foul.
look, some games, the opponents are going to complain we get more calls. other games, we complain. if it's a perfect game, it wouldn't be as exciting would it? after every game, at least ONE team is going to complain about the refs. that's reality. so we need to stop looking at that route. complaining about the refs are not gonna do u any good. can complaining give us the 04-05 series v. the mavs back and we would have gotten out of the first roudn already? no. so move on. stop complaining. great teams overcome the refs. we did that tonight.
um, those things can be controlled by those players. rafer can limit his chucking. yao can be more aggressive (he got 15+ fts in 2 games recently), tracy can control his shot selection. so yes, complaining about those things is valid. hell, i'm sure some people in the rockets organization reads this and relay it to them. this year, all those things have improved. again, tell me how they are biased against yao when yao will get calls in most other games. and why would the league be biased against him when he's the biggest start internationally? that's contradictory. some refs are simply BAD. that doesn't mean they are biased. do i say palmer is a biased ref or just a bad ref? she's a BAD ref. hopefully we'll get better refs in the playoffs and these things are minimized. but when you do face these refs, you gotta overcome it. yao didn't earlier but did at the end. that's a great sign. but you can look at this game and his previous games. he got worse position (farther from the basket) and simply letting a short guy push you like that for a dunk is just not gonna get you any respect from the refs.
The refs aren't there for players to get respect from them, they are there to do the job they get paid to do. Point blank. There was nothing wrong with Yao taking a shot that takes him away from contact (fade-away). It is in his offensive arsenal. If Hakeem didn't take his dreamshake (fade-away) to put a game out of reach we wouldn't have two championships. Yao shot 7-9 after going 2-8, all the shots were good shots for him.
that's hakeem's patented move. he wants to do that move. yao is not at his best when he takes that move (remember the utah series). the reason he's shooting 64% recently is getting great position, getting put backs, using his best shot -> the hook shot. the 2 shots that he made overj efferson in the 4th -> hook shots. fadeaways are some of his worst shots. yes he can take and make them, but not at a high rate as the other moves. it's like tracy can take and make those tough jumpers, should he do it all the time? obviously no.
i really hate when people bring up this line. i mean if there was any conspiracy, it would be irrelevant for how big of star he is internationally or how much team revenue he rakes in. have you ever thought that the league may be abusing this privilege by taking in the money yao brings, but also officiating him unfairly because marketing a foreign player would bode less well with domestic fans than marketing an american player. think about it. why is dwight being hyped up so much? i don't remember yao getting that much hype 2-3 yrs ago when he was flat out dominating and the only true center left. not saying any of this is true, but when people bring that line up it's really irrelevant actually.
IF you're talking conspiracy, there's 2 things. first, conventional wisdom is that big men dont sell. given a choice the league will always market a guard or small forward over a center. shaq is the exception but think about all those years hakeem was dominating... the league was busy pushing penny and grant hill. IF there is a conspiracy AND the conspiracy was to max profit, then the league would do what it could to keep Yao competitive but make sure wade, lebron, kobe would be highlighted and make it to the Finals every year second, in terms of international marketing, $tern doesn't need yao to WIN. he only needed yao to be competitive as a wedge to the chinese market. dont buy the hype, yao is useless as a marketing tool in asia outside of china but even in china the NBA doesn't need yao to win the chip to keep itself popular. if yao was a bust then yeah it would drain interest in china but what yao is now... POTENTIAL spoiler and big question mark (but a legit threat) is the ideal situation for Stern. psychologically speaking uncertainly is more addicting than surefire wins or surefire losses. IF you're looking for a conspiracy Yao's career (including huge buildup every year before playoffs and dramatic first round exit) is progressing EXACTLY how the brain trust would envision to maintain max interest in china. IS there a conspiracy? to a certain degree of course, it's been established that the officials have been instructed to clamp down on Yao (JVG's fine) and refs HAVE impacted the rockets' playoff results (finley's foot out of bounds). but are they directly keeping yao from advancing? probably not, it's just yao doesn't get the star calls that wade and kobe feast on to pull out close games. $tern and his cronies are some of the most magnificient manipulators in the corporate world there's no reason they would actively keep yao from winning. after all look at the storylines why could feed all offseason following a houston win: Tmac's triumph... yao's journey, artest's redemption etc... it's just they stand to make MUCH MUCH more from Kobe and the fakers or Lebron/wade that's why they push those guys more
look, the refs were not doing their jobs. period. to overcome might be the only choice players have in an unfairly officiated game, but to overcome should never have been an element of the game. some of the refs are simply bad? then why doesn't the league simply get rid of them? this isn't something new, it's been a problem for decades. all in all, no one is saying players should use refs as an excuse when they don't play well. but bad officiating does limit players' performance - that is just a simple fact. when fans see this (like last night), fans complain as paying customers. simple as that.
It is a no brainer, a badly officiated matches can impact the outcome. Somehow somewhere someone is getting rich from all these officiating.
