Saturday, May 17, 2008

SCIENCE!


(An artist's rendering of me while conducting this experiment)

As I noted in my preview to game 6, Rohan from At the Hive and I took note of how many poor fouls calls we thought each team received. I thought the Spurs had 6 calls they either should have gotten or didn't get, while the Hornets had 4. Rohan had it at 3 a piece, so I think both of us concluded that the game was reasonably well officiated.

Check out his extended thoughts on the experiment here.

As far as the fouls I noted, most of them were off the ball fouls that I thought were illegitimate or unnecessary. Also most of the "pro-Spurs" fouls I recorded came in the 1st quarter. As far as the stretch during the third in which the Hornets got called for a number of Offensive fouls in a row, the only foul I included from that stretch was David West's foul on Ginobili (actually a defensive foul). I just thought the got untangled up and were untangling themselves. Hell, I didn't even think Ginobili played up the contact and if Ginobili ain't floppin', you know it ain't a foul.

As far as the actual offensive fouls in that span, I didn't include them because I thought, although tightly called, they were being called consistently. West and Paul were leading with their elbows and driving into men whose feet were planted. That's ripe for a charge (by the way the Jazz should have gotten the exact same call on Kobe last night, but then again Stern has to protect his interests).

Check out his Rohan's reflections that I linked to above, and swing by both here and there after game 7, because we're gonna do the same experiment and possibly have the beginnings of an explanation for the absurd dominance of home teams this post-season.

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