I have this mental picture of Yao charging a ref with JVG clinging onto one of his legs trying to hold him back.
I posted this in the other thread as well but i think it belongs here as well =) I know everyone talks about Yao's Defense and foul problems but one thing that we all need to realize is that defense in the NBA is the hardest thing to learn for any player whether they come out of college or europe or any league for that matter. Unless you are known on your team as a defense specialist then you will have to take time to learn the defense and get used to it at the NBA level. Look at any player that has even played 4 years in college coming into the league...they will always have the offensive talent yet lack the know how to be a good defender at the NBA level, once again if you are known in college as a defensive player then that might be a different case. Go down the list of good defenders, most of them had to take time and adjust and realize what they can and cant get away with, where to be during a play etc. Hakeem was an amazing athlete coming out of U of H and would block shots and be everwhere, but he was erratic and would foul as well and look awkward at times cuase he didn't know where to be and how to play an opponent. As time went by he got better and better and then we all know how it turned out. He became one of th e best defenders in the league and all time. Just saying all this talk about yaos defense and foul problems are kind of pointless. Once he gets the hang of it he will be fine and be a great defender and player all around. Now if he is still doing this 8 years into his career then we have a problem. Defending is the one thing that has to always be learned on the nBA level....scoring is natural to all of them. _______________
Of course I am a fan of the rockets, but I am going to try to be objective about them. EVERY fan of every team always feels like hey are screwed royally by the officials. (I believe you live in Indiana, right? Go ask Pacers fan feel about how they were treated vs. the Bulls or Knicks in the 90's.) Do you guys think LeBron or Arenas is lying, that they really know that they are not fouled that much? No, they are telling what they think is the truth. The thing is, judging NBA fouls and non-calls is so very difficult and subjective even without any external bias filtering in. Hell, go back and search - even I have posted about "worst calls ever" "worst officiating ever" with reference to Yao and everybody else in the game threads and in chat. But that is just me being a fan. Just looking at the stuff that is not disputable like stats, it appears that Yao is going to the line a lot, (I really wish I could dig up that 82games article. ) So it's hard for me to buy into these conspiracy theories unless there is simply a conspiracy against the entire league by all the officials.
Shaq is the perfect example though. Anti-Shaq people see shaq put his shoulder into somebody and say "How is that not a foul?" And they're right. Shaq puts his shoulder into somebody 2 minutes later and it gets called and he says "how is that a foul? I just did that and you didn't call it." And he's right. It's the nature of the beast.
Yao has had his fair shares of bad calls for sure. However, sometimes he really needs to stop being so aggressive on defense, especially in situations where a call is waiting to happen. For example, last night he picked up a foul trying to block a Curry dunk from behind. Van commented that in most cases the refs are gonna call that a foul no matter what. Yao needs to remember that he should just let a couple of baskets go if he has no or little chance to do anything to the baskets. And also it gives me freak watching him chasing the guards on the 3 point line and then going back to his man in the paint. Lots of times it was too late and he picks up cheap fouls on that situation. I have never seen Shaq going out to chase guards in the perimeter even if the opposing teams were running P&R on him like crazy. I know that DVD is tough defense minded coach. However, he should absolutely STOP demanding Yao to defend guards at the perimeter since it's just NOT WORTH it.
Yes! I just found it, here we go NBA Foul Drawing Leaders Except for the incredible foul drawing prowess of Danny Fortson - you can see that Yao is only slightly worse than Shaq and clocks in at 12th in the league at foul %. Obviously this number (not adjusted like I'd hoped) doesn't tell us everything, but it certainly does tell us that things are pretty uniform at the top end of the scale - which reinforces my belief that inconsistent/bad fouls are pretty evenly spread among teams.
That is no longer the case recently. Yao's free throw attempts dropped from 11th in the league about one month ago to 21th in the league now. He settle for jump shots too much recently, I believe he should go to the hoop more like the beginning of the season. Drawing fouls are good for a team in 4th quarter.
What's happening now is a battle on how Yao will be officiated throughout the rest of his career. The officials are "writing the book" on him - defining a set of rules just for him; they are being refined every game he plays. The process goes on with all young players, (LBJ, Wade, etc.), but there is no adequate parallel in today's NBA simply because of Yao's unique dimensions. The most similar argument was over a young Shaq. Remember how people were divided over how to officiate his unprecedented size and strength? He'd get hacked on virtually every play, go to the line but not nearly enough, and get called for numerous offensive fouls. He and the officials both adjusted. He added moves to his game - well, at least a little hook - and as he matured he gets called for offensive fouls much less frequently, even though he still uproots people and drives straight through their bodies. Yao is the opposite, a finesse player trying to be aggressive. He gets called for a disproportionate # of offensive fouls when he makes physical moves. When contrasted with the # of defensive fouls he gets on bang-bang plays, it's frustrating. Hopefully, as officials see his game evolve, the # of questionable fouls will plateau and drop. There's no reason to think they won't, as with every other big man that's played the game.
Not really. At the beginning of the season, we were dumping the ball to Yao in the low post and watch him go one on one or one on two against defenders. Now in the last 6 weeks or so, we have been moving the ball around so well that Yao got lots of open looks BOTH inside AND outside the paint, and his FT shots of course have dropped dramatically. Also in the first two months when his left elbow was hurt, he never made any open jumpers and relied solely on power moves inside to score. There is a huge difference there. I won't complain a bit if he keeps shooting 65% from the field. That's what he has been doing since the beginning of Feb.
Would it help if before the game he passed out coupons for free meals at his parents' restaurant to the refs?
The only problem with that is at least half the fouls are called when Yao is in a scoring position with the ball, but still on the floor. Sometimes they don't even give him freethrows when he's in the motion of shooting. A lot of times the refs call these fouls and it actually bails out the defense. Remember when Yao pumpfaked and Ratliff landed on his head in incredibly violent fashion? He didn't even get freethrows for that.
And yet even not counting those fouls and as a finesse player he still manages to draw shooting fouls at or around the same rate as Shaq.
Bottom line... Shaq gets hacked a lot and doesn't always get the call, but he dishes out just as much as he takes in. Yao, on the other hand, sometimes gets called for breathing too hard on defense, but can literally get tackled on the open court without a call.
Whether Yao should get more calls on offense or not, we just want consistency on both ends of the court. If he's getting mugged on one end, then let him play on defense. You think they would have called Yao's first foul if it were Shaq that Antawn Jamison was jumping into? What about his foul at the end of the third where Thomas jumps into his chest as he stood there with his arms up? If you are gonna call ticky tack BS on him, then give him more calls on offense.
That of course, ignores all the calls on the defensive end. And I didn't even have to pick apart your argument on the offensive end.
Pick away. The point is NOT that Yao doesn't get victimized by bad calls. He most certainly does, frequently. The point is that it is very difficult to prove that he is more victimized than anybody else to a significant degree. If you can do it go ahead, but your evidence is going to be anectdotal - [insert NBA team or player name here]'s fans can come up with similar statements, and they are not lying. EDIT: So then let's look at fouls committed like you want. According to ESPN, he's 43rd in the league at 5.8 fouls/48. By comparison, Danny Fortson leads the league with 12.2, Shawn Bradley is 3rd with 9.9, Ilgauskas is a few slots ahead of Yao at 5.8 also, Shaq is 66th with 5.3. Bostjan Nachbar is at 6.9, Dikemebe Mutumbo is at 5.3. Somewhat surprisingly, Ben Wallace is tops among qualifiers at just under 3. Now, aside from the Teflon treatment accorded to Wallace - how is Yao treated unfairly, judging simply by this information? For a relatively awkward player at times, he seems to be right in the middle of the curve as far as picking up fouls as far as his peer group goes.
Well, stats don't lie, but do you know how to interpret them? To start, if Yao could have gotten a shot off but was fouled. No continuation called. Well, guess what? His fouls against went up but he's shots stayed the same. There's also the difference between how he's fouled. If on one possession he gets, pushed, slapped, hacked, whacked and when he gets fouled when getting he's shot off, that's still one addtional foul, one additional shot. Well, what about the ones that aren't calls? Notice how they don't show up on the stats at all? How does that matter? Well, I'm sure nobody would suggest that Jeff Foster or Zaza Pachulia get pushed the same way as Yao. But noooooooooooo, you say. Yao as a finess player draws fouls as much as Shaq. Well, Jeff Foster, who doesn't have an offensive game to speak of, draws more fouls than Yao, per your stats. Is Foster more physical, more gifted, demands more defensive attention, what? Also, why do I have to keep reminding people that Shaq fouls far more than he's fouled. Imagine you call it a foul when he lowers he's shoulders (requiring him to do more to get position), would he be fouled as much? If you have proven anything useful with the 82games stats, it's that big men gets fouled more frequently when shooting than guards since that list has a grand total of under 3 perimeter players on it. With the ESPN stats... same thing. If Yao gets shoved 100 times before they call it once, and he gets shoved 580 times, he'd still average 5.8 fouls against per game. Fouls per 48 and fouls per min hardly tells us anything useful at all. It DOESN'T tell how much Yao is fouled. It tells us out of the many times Yao is fouled, HOW MANY is actually called. What we wanted to know is the difference between the two, which (nothing against 82games or ESPN) neither of your stats prove. Having said that, the whole topic is subjective. But from what we KNOW watching Rockets games he routinely gets the shaft playing aginst the 5 he plays. For some reason, a foul he commits seem to have vastly different interpretations when commited against him. And that is the best estimate of the point above. What I also know from watching Shaq's game or Lebron's game or TD's game is that there isn't as much NEGATIVE difference in interpretation between the two ends. If anything, they get the "benefit of the doubt," if you will. For example, if Shaq lowers his shoulders, he gets away with it. But what if Scrub ABC lowers his shoulders in to Shaq...
