What's Going On?

This is sensible. I’m done with the topic at least

But I am not buying your explanation.

Something smells real bad with this situation and it is time to de-oderize the situation.

The coaching staff needs to make their voices heard, and we fans need to be very visible and audible in our protests.

I think that many, many signs should be on display at the game making our displeasure at this situation clear.

Only when the Blazers play at full capacity and then get beaten under strange circumstances can any kind of meaningful query be initiated

my contention is that the blazers will not be able to play at full capacity as long as there is a double standard existing concerning the physical play of the game. it is so apparent to me that the rockets are being allowed a significant amount of leeway that is allowing them to be the more aggressive team.

man, i wish i didnt have to be a whiner about this. its making this series far less enjoyable for me.

but now with mcmillan, plus barrett, etc. voicing concern, im feeling far less crazy and stupid about going nuts over this.

even you, dave, pointed out those moving picks.

trust me, i wish i shared your stated opinion. then i could relax. all season long, ive had a great time enjoying the growth of the team; enjoying all the WINS and LOSSES. but this is hard. it feels like the truly better team will not be advancing, and the purpose of the 7 game series being thwarted.

you said all that, but left logic completely out.

point number 1, in which you point out the NBA’s biggest flaw:

The NBA has always favored bigger names with the benefit of the doubt in close calls.

point number 2: you appear to have not seen the games mentioned, in which many non-fouls were being called on portland, whereas multiple ACTUAL fouls committed by houston were not called.

point number 3, in which you point out where this affects us the most:

The Blazers haven’t fallen behind in this series just from a lack of Przybilla and Oden, but from the lack of being able to utilize Przybilla and Oden (and a couple other players) to full advantage.

CAUSE + EFFECT = UNFAIR HANDICAPPING

bias proven. it’s stated by EVERY sportswriter who tries stupidly to defend the league as “that’s just the way it is” but ultimately, that’s exactly how it should never be. the fact that the blazers got within 1 point of a win the other night proves they are the better team, regardless of what the league says the final score is.

i don’t play a 3-year old child basketball and then blame him for not overcoming his circumstances when he loses every time.

final note: i love the blazers, but there’s no way around it, the current NBA product is s#!t. you’d be doing real fans a solid by acknowledging this and calling for change, rather than blaming our players when they can’t succeed in an obviously majorly flawed system.

Once Oden and Przy become the real threats they need to be, Portland will take that next step. Unless LMA or Roy take their game to even higher levels (possible with LMA more so—but Roy less so), it’s going to be hard to imagine this Blazer team getting that much better without improvement from Oden.

In other words, it’s pretty amazing that people are unhappy that the Blazers aren’t winning a series in a matchup they have a tough time with. When a team is of championship caliber, they take all comers, and pretty much beat you in all matchup’s.

Short-term: Acceptance. We have no choice about whether or not we get calls against us. We have no choice whether or not we are deep down in the series and have to win three games in a row now. We have nothing but choices about how we react to it. In those choices, there is opportunity to learn and a lot of freedom to do things differently. It was unfortunate how things turned out in two close games, but our team made enough mistakes themselves, and now have to deal with it. That will influence how I perceive this team more (and likely better) than Nate, Brandon or some other player starting to complain about some questionable calls.

Long-term: Change. One thing likely all fans can agree on: The general state of NBA officiating is abysmal without even alleging any fixing. Sub par. While not perfect it’s better in the NFL, NHL, and MLB. All fast sports with critical decisions to be made. Even in soccer, the quality in international refereeing is better and the accountability to the media afterwards higher. And that’s a sport where the refs get a lot of critique from fans and coaches since one main guy has to make the calls assisted by two sideline refs – one in each half – on an area like a football field and thus they are often pretty far away from the action. While players routinely get in the face of the ref to argue calls which never helps since there are zero replays for the ref (but lots for the fans at home) and every decision is matter of fact final.

Stern and the people he put in charge of officiating have declared action to better it after the scandal, and little has happened so far. That needs to change to restore faith in the sport as soon as possible. I don’t care if the solution is a head umpire who watches further away or on TV, more reviews, a possibility to challenge, more accountability/transparency, more education of the refs, more education of the fans (say a segment on ESPN and TNT where refs explain a situation and the rules behind it from many angles), or some combination thereof. But something needs to happen sooner rather than later. Fans are right to demand action here.

Blazer’s fans are way cooler, smarter, sexier, and in general always better than Rocket’s fans. The NBA refs feel bad for the Rocket’s fans and want to build up their self esteem, so they call lame fouls against the Blazers just to make the Rocket’s fans happy. It is as simple as that.

The NBA has always favored bigger names with the benefit of the doubt in close calls. For better or worse, this is the league

These guys are supppose to look at the action not the names on the uniforms …If they are making decisions based on who it is, rather than what is happening then they are screwing up by default and THAT HAS TO STOP…

“just the way it is” is a weak excuse for not demanding that things change…accepting injustice is not a way of life in America…if “the way it is” wasjust OK we’d still have child labor sweat shops (o…thats right, we just exported them), DDT (o thats right we just exported that too) no enviro laws (o yeah, exported our pollution too), slavery (o yeah, still got that too), and just male property owners voting

Obviously the two-fouls-in-six-minutes pace of the first quarters hasn’t dogged the Blazers all game long or both centers would be fouling out of every game by the third quarter. The ability to put the right people on the floor and play defense at least normally, if not aggressively, is important to the Blazers.

Those two statemens contradict one another. The Blazers were forced to back down from being normally agressive on D in order to stay on the floor . . . .which in turns leads to less boxing out, less establishing position, not trying for steals – - – changes the whole tone and nature of the contest…

Welcome to the NBE – - -National Basketball Extravaganza….what a show. Wish it could be a game again.

Other than Brooks missing some FTs, Houston made a lot of clutch plays down the stretch of games 3 and 4-like Landry’s J, Battier’s treys, the guy taking the charge on BRoy, the whole damn team getting offensive rebounds-while Portland made some big mistakes. Thats the main reason we’re staring at 1-3. I also think that based purely on style, the Rockets will draw more fouls than us-they have a tough cover in the post, and several guys that drive aggressively to the hoop, and we don’t have a post threat, and only Roy goes to the hoop (and he generally shoots a lot of FT’s). That said, I think an argument could be made (especially in game 4) that early ticky tacky fouls on Pryz and Oden soften up our D early and help Houston get out to a good lead that we have to struggle back from.

Dave. How do you expect Pryzbilla and Oden to play at full capacity when they are in constant foul trouble? This is all due to ‘star power’. Yao Ming has incredible ‘star power’, he has what 5 billion people behind him plus the fans in Houston and we have little old Roy. Roy could only come up with about 5 million tops. Joel and Greg probably are being a tad bit more aggressive when defending Yao but not at the rate of 5 fouls in 20 minutes. It could not be any clearer then in Game 4 where only Roy and LMA (our ‘star players) got more than 1 free throw attempt. There is no doubt in my mind that if the games were officiated fairly, the series would be 2-2 and maybe even 3-1 in our favor. I trust Joel at least to play smart defense and without fouling like he has all season, but he hasn’t been able to due to the crappy officiating. And I think that its about time that Nate complained to the league about it, he has been far too quite about it all series long.

I keep thinking I am over at Dreamshake with the amount of whining going on here. Not a lot you can do about it, and if the Blazers didn’t revert back to an old form that they have done all year which is to not get aggressive on the boards and shoot(or not shoot) a poor selection of shots when it counts, we would not be having this conversation. We would look and sound like the fans I would hope I saw in the Blazer fans, not like a bunch of Rocket or L*ker fans for Gods sake. I went over to the Rockdt site after Game 2 and remarked at how nice it is to be a part of BE.

You really can’t do much about fate and the refereeing right now. Go to the game tonite and focus on helping the team not just whining about every call. Deal with the refereeing in the summer, right now the team needs the focus and Portland doesnt need to be viewed as a podunk Whining town…like Houston….

Go Blazers!

BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, ITS REALLY IMPORTANT. ITS A KEY TO THE SERIES. HOW WILL THE REFS PERFORM TONIGHT? OMG OMG OMG REFS ARE KILLING US

WAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The amount of jawjacking a star can have at a ref to argue a foul or a coach should be cut off. I think Nate has it right; unfortunately in this league he is losing out. I think all that should be cut out. Yet Joel gets a T, for what?

Refereeing, good or bad, has been as much a part of the fabric of sports as the playing itself.

Lets Get em in Game 5!

It’s about time there was some more rational discussion on this topic when it comes to this team. Thank you for this post, Dave. I can only hope this will help calm the nerves of the Blazer faithful who want to tear the refs limb from limb over the last couple of games.

Here’s to Portland winning by so much tonight that the refs could call 30 more fouls on Portland than Houston, and it still wouldn’t be enough!

is always gonna be a problem when you front Yao, the defender puts himself in a position of being instantly boxed out when the shot goes up. That being said I don’t think we control Yao any other way but to front him. More guys need to hit the boards when Joel and Greg are fronting or their absence of rebounding will never be made up for on the stat sheet.

Everyone agrees that stars get the calls, so let’s get more stars. A team of LeBron, Kobe, Dwyane, Yao, and CP3 would never get called for fouls. Or traveling, or anything at all. They could beat opponents with nightsticks and the other guys would get called for blocking. Paul Allen and Kevin Pritchard, make it happen!

That is BS. Why don’t they televise all the playoff games on national tv….?

Apologies for the fact that I haven’t been reading BE discussions of this topic. But, just based on my own paraniod musings: if there IS a conspiracy, I’d suggest it doesn’t have to do with the NBA’s understandable desire to keep Yao and his gazillion Chinese fans tuned in. If that were the case, the Rockets would have advanced in prior years.

Rather, I’d suggest that the league may be ultra-paranoid about anything interferring with the dream Kobe vs LeBron matchup in the Finals. Realistically, the Blazers are no more of a threat than the Rockets to beat the Lakers in Round 2. But—in theory—David Stern et all could have looked at the Lakers’ history of futility in the Rose Garden and the Blazers’ late-season dominance—even on the road—and gotten concerned.

Again, this is just hypothetical; I don’t necessarily believe there’s anything conspiratorial behind this series’ terrible officiating. But there WAS a series that I DO think was rigged—that long-ago Kings vs Lakers series—and the way it was accomplished then was very simple: early phantom calls on the Kings’ center, Vlade Divac.

In that case, Vlade didn’t even need to touch someone to get a couple of quick first-quarter fouls. By contrast, GO and Przy have actually touched Yao’s royal person when whistled. But the general pattern in this series is eerily reminiscent of that long-ago travesty. Just saying…

The Blazers and their fans cannot deny that they’ve been given chances to win the close games.

- Steve Blake jacking up an airball 3 with 9 seconds on the shot clock
- Travis Outlaw jacking up a shot that barely drew iron in game 4 with ~20 seconds to play
- etc.

The Blazers have had their shots to win these close games but couldn’t execute. There’s nobody to blame there but themselves.

The team that is the most assertive always gets the most calls in its favor. Houston has pushed the ball down our throats, and the refs have no sympathy for weakness. Too bad, so sad.

Dave, if it looks, smells and acts like a duck……

Kobe scores 30 a game because he’s a great player, but also because he gets more calls than other players. Gasol scores as many as he does because he’s tough to defend, a real hustler, but because he whines all game long he protects his interests and gets more calls. Because he plays for LA, he gets more calls. It is a market thing, and you just admitted it. That is all that needs to be said. THAT STATEMENT OF YOURS PROVES THE NBA IS CORRUPT IN CHOOSING MARKETS, NOT TEAMS.

And the Blazers? They have a tremendous size advantage in this series. Without Yao, Houston’s next player is 6’9. So as a consequence, the NBA has obviously authorized a slant in the officiating toward Yao that cuts directly into that advantage. Remember, it’s market not team.

Call me a whiner, but first watch the games, then decide before deciding. Our two big guys have been placed in foul trouble _ every single game_ before the 1st quarter is over with. Last game they both had two fouls on them in the first 6 minutes. And if you were watching the game, you would see they were not fouls by any stretch of the imagination that were worth calling.

Portland loses its size advantage, and is now down 15 again because they can’t defend for one whole quarter while the NBA gets their way.

Look, if Portland would take the ball to the basket on offense and rebound better on defense, the referees would not be an issue at all. And you’d be the team up 3-1.

Have there been questionable calls? Sure, there always are in a playoff series… but Yao is still getting beat up every game, and it’s not like he’s shooting 15 FTs every night. Meanwhile Roy is getting the D-Wade in ’06 treatment at times. BOTH teams have benefitted from these “questionable” calls.

I must admit, I’m saddened that you’ve help feed this mentality, Dave.

Seen Yao get called for fouls many times just standing in the paint with his hands up, teams are taught to run at him and initiate contact – After what Yao did in game one the blazers have been forced to use a 3 headed Monster to try and contain him, so far it has worked ( some ) – take the fouls or take Yao going off for 30 points.. ya;ll decide. good luck – Looking forward to a good game : )