levon wrote:AussieCeltic wrote:levon wrote:I think it starts with LeBron and AD who were never foulers to begin with long before they were Lakers players. Then the drop coverage. Then the increased aggression when teetering on desperation (if you ever watch AD over the course of 82, you know he can get 8 FTA if he's going into the defender vs nights where he shoots bs hooks and jumpers). Then the foul merchant guards. The interior volume. The increased perimeter defense with Vanderbilt. All compounding with the fact that once a foul limit is reached, every foul is free throws.
That's a unique build. No other team has a superstar 4 and 5 who are also all-time intelligent defenders who like to overwhelm you in transition.
Now do I believe superstars get a favorable whistle? Of course. Do I believe the league would prefer LA in the playoffs? No doubt. But do I believe that every ref hive minded LA to the playoffs with no mandate or that there is an implicit punishment system if you don't align with the Laker agenda? Obviously not. Put another way, ref bias is a factor, but if you did a factor analysis the actual basketball blows it away.
If you have evidence that refs who were unfavorable to the Lakers got left home from big games, let me know. I did a simple analysis on w-l record for a few refs last season and saw no consistent bias except that they all hated the Raptors.
Vanderbilt has only played 55 games for the Lakers so may as well throw that out. There’s no differentiator with him being in or out.
Lebron has decreased his fouls per game the last 2 seasons dramatically. He’s now down to 1.2 per game in 35 mins of play. The lowest of any player over 30 mins of play.
I also don’t care if it’s low or that the Lakers are #1 (someone has to be right?). It’s the size of the differential that stands out and it’s a huge huge number. Just something that shouldn’t happen in any sports when the outcome is largely determined by the ref.
Look, I can see we’re never going to agree. I think Laker fans need to have a look and really ask themselves if they wouldn’t be asking the same questions if it were another team doing this. Because, I’ve seen the Laker fans in this very thread complaining in game threads about calls. Well, welcome to every single opponent vs your team.
You keep doing the same thing, which is just giving me various slices of the same phenomenon. I understand LeBron's reduced his fouls and that the Lakers as a whole don't foul. I watch them not foul. I watch LeBron just switch everything at the elbow and often guard the worst offensive player. It's literally in the tape.
We don't agree not because we're Lakers and Celtics fans respectively. It's like a fundamental breakdown in empirical process. Others have called you out for arguing there's something unjust by reframing the same effect over and over in different terms and never providing evidence of the cause. My mistake (guilty pleasure?) is trying to explain the cause using basketball reasons, which you then cherrypick stats to shoot down because of dunk-on culture.
No, I wouldn't be asking these questions. I frankly didn't give a **** about the 2017-2018 Charlotte Hornets. The only reason this is even a meme instead of a "huh, interesting" stat is because of the logo.
Mate that’s **** rich coming from you. I’ve answered each and all of your points directly and concisely with statistics and then you turn around and change the goal posts. Each and everytime without fail.
Before you said it was the deadline was the reason. I proved you wrong.
The disparity was the same before and after the Boston game. I proved you wrong.
Then you said ADs mins was the difference. I proved you wrong.
Then you said Reaves mins was the difference. I proved you wrong.
Then you wanted a whole bunch of random data which had no correlation.
Make up your mind