Thanks for the great reporting here and releasing this without the paywall!
This story is so wild. Shouldn't Adam Silver be responding to it? The Dumars/McCutchen interview made it sound like they post each other up in the office to help explain calls, WTF? And they pretty clearly deny any league office direction in that interview. Then later that night, a Woj leak.
If anything, it's disturbing how they are handling this...it's worse if the influence is coming from somewhere else (insert Gobert $$ gesture meme). I wonder if someone can examine gambling data relevant to the officiating shift..
Overall, the changes are good and the games are better, but why cover it up and how can they make these kind of changes mid-season? If the status of play is changed this easily, couldn't it change again just as easily. That's not a comfortable position for teams or fans.
I’m so glad you have an outlet to write things like this, breaking open and breaking into ideas that are happening RIGHT NOW. You’re one of our best, Tom.
One thing to note on the reduced free throws. A lot of those players (ex Lilllard and Curry) are not particularly foul hunters. And that is true of several others. I'd love to see the drop for the players like LeBron and Harden and others that throw themselves into defenders. Unless I missed something in the data, this looks more like not calling fouls on the smaller players who don't seek out contact and still rewarding the ones that do. Have to see the whole list to really tell.
We should look at the list those getting the most foul calls and see what style of players have dropped the most. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me the worst by far are those that seek out contact rather than just making a basketball play - lowering your shoulder into someone isn't basketball in my book...
For example, the Warriors just played the first half against Memphis and shot 1 foul shot. Obviously, they need to learn to run into people when driving (and yes Curry drives frequently). And the refs have never enforced freedom of movement. To me, all of this is just further penalizing the smaller quicker players to the advantage of the bulkier, more physical players.
Now, yes, a lot of the guards get away with travels and carries all the time (love to see that go away as well)
Thanks for the great reporting here and releasing this without the paywall!
This story is so wild. Shouldn't Adam Silver be responding to it? The Dumars/McCutchen interview made it sound like they post each other up in the office to help explain calls, WTF? And they pretty clearly deny any league office direction in that interview. Then later that night, a Woj leak.
If anything, it's disturbing how they are handling this...it's worse if the influence is coming from somewhere else (insert Gobert $$ gesture meme). I wonder if someone can examine gambling data relevant to the officiating shift..
Overall, the changes are good and the games are better, but why cover it up and how can they make these kind of changes mid-season? If the status of play is changed this easily, couldn't it change again just as easily. That's not a comfortable position for teams or fans.
I’m so glad you have an outlet to write things like this, breaking open and breaking into ideas that are happening RIGHT NOW. You’re one of our best, Tom.
One thing to note on the reduced free throws. A lot of those players (ex Lilllard and Curry) are not particularly foul hunters. And that is true of several others. I'd love to see the drop for the players like LeBron and Harden and others that throw themselves into defenders. Unless I missed something in the data, this looks more like not calling fouls on the smaller players who don't seek out contact and still rewarding the ones that do. Have to see the whole list to really tell.
We should look at the list those getting the most foul calls and see what style of players have dropped the most. Maybe I'm wrong, but to me the worst by far are those that seek out contact rather than just making a basketball play - lowering your shoulder into someone isn't basketball in my book...
For example, the Warriors just played the first half against Memphis and shot 1 foul shot. Obviously, they need to learn to run into people when driving (and yes Curry drives frequently). And the refs have never enforced freedom of movement. To me, all of this is just further penalizing the smaller quicker players to the advantage of the bulkier, more physical players.
Now, yes, a lot of the guards get away with travels and carries all the time (love to see that go away as well)