I saw the thread on Tmac/Yao not getting calls, and I was just going to post this in there, but I think this topic deserves its own thread. My opinion is that Tmac and Yao don't get the calls because they don't draw contact aggressively. A guy like Dwayne Wade will go to the basket and jump into a guy sideways and land on the floor, and you have to call the foul. But Tmac will go to the basket, get hacked, and no call because he isn't flying sideways and landing on the floor every time he goes to the basket. Which leads me to the point of this thread being made. They have gotten stricter on calling fouls on perimeter players because they don't want them getting injured. I say, if you want to prevent stars from getting injured, stop rewarding Dwayne Wades of the league fouls when they floor burn their way to the basket. It might actually be hard to do, because sometimes its actually a foul when they do it. The best solution is instant replay (although that would add a ton of time to the game), the easiest is for the NBA to "emphasize" not calling those type of calls at the beginning of the year, and maybe the word gets out that you can't draw a foul any time you want by hitting the floor.
It seems like to me that alot of injuries happen to players on the defensive end. Most of Yaos injuries have occured when he is going up to block a shot and he lands awkwardly. The best way to avoid injury is by playing controlled fundamentally sound basketball. A guy like Scola is always throwing his body around, but he is always in good position and he always knows where he is at on the court. That awareness allows him to make decisive moves. When you start playing wrecklessly or trying to do too much, thats when you get injured.
No, the players use two hands on Yao, that is a foul at anytime, nothing has to do with the aggressive contact. I think that NBA wants to the players to score more, make the games to be more interesting, that is why they changed the rule. That has been said in somewhere before.
The actual injuries are rarely on floor-burn fouls. But if you notice, a lot of these players that are considered injury prone are the guys that take it to the hole a lot. Dwayne Wade, Tracy McGrady (he did in Orlando atleast), AI... Obviously there are exceptions like Yao. But with guys like Tmac, Wade and AI... if they didn't have this idea that "well, I can draw a foul if I fly to the basket at full speed and jump into a guy", they probably wouldn't be injury prone players.
It is a foul any time, but they don't call it. Meanwhile Wade is getting calls that AREN'T fouls. The refs are used to blowing the whistle when they see a guy in the air, nearly falling over, making an incredible athletic shot. Not a guy like Yao that is fundamentally sound.
And what injury would that have been exactly? I don't remember Yao "landing awkardly" and getting injured....
Wade averages like 1.8x as many free throw attempts as T-Mac, per-minute. And he probably attacks the basketball at least that much more often. Looks fair to me.
i think its a few different things, for one, players are not as limited to the definition of their position as they once were. You got guards going in to rebound with the big guys and big men are no longer slow and can jump out of the gym. Because of this there isn't always good spacing and guys land on each other, or hurt themselves trying to avoid not landing on each other. Also, more guys in a smaller space means more people reaching in or fouling, which means guys getting hit and knocked down more......also, NBA guys don't like to lift weights, so a lot of them don't have very strong joints....something like what happened to Livingston may not have happened to someone with a stronger base, or at least not as bad.....but there's also a few guys who are natrually strong or actually do lift, and when you mix strong with weak, someone is gonna get hurt.
It depends. Remember Wade just sliping down the court getting a foul that had no contact. That's it, he gets some call for free because he is aggressive all the time. T-Mac and Yao love to settle for midrange too much or three pt in T-Mac's case. Also constant injuries... I think there's a bad luck there after all.
i don't really agree with calling yao injury prone, he's been injured the last three years, last year was the only injury that wasn't a freak injury, the other two, if i remember correctly were just from people falling on him, remember when he was out 2 years ago because chuck hayes tried to draw a charge or something and came crashing into yaos leg? there's nothing a player can do about that, wrong place wrong time injuries, i don't see him having another stress fracture type injury because he is being cautious, but because people have crashed into him isn't his fault, he can't help the other injuries
Proceed with caution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHFMXjPjM40 I mean he doesnt really land awkwardly so much as some dude just comes crashing in to his leg. Yao was trailing the play out of position and he was trying to do too much IMO.
