clyde21 wrote:superstar calls are a thing, but let's get one thing straight Tomas...ain't no one ever said 'i wanna go watch Tomas Satoransky play basketball'...they come to watch Giannis, not you.
Yeah, I have said such thing plenty of times soo.. American arrogance is astonishing.. But I understand the point you are making, which I guess is Entertainment first, Sports second, which is exactly the NBA, in that case American fans and the media should just drop the narrative that anyone who isnt in the NBA is just no good in the Sport (the less meaningfull portion of the NBA)
To get to the actual Giannis calls, I love the fact that in the Intl basketball it doesnt have to be either/or in these situations because they are IMPOSSIBLE to judge lots of the time. However not calling offensive fouls on excessive use of off arm ( literally only reason how Lebron James is capable of beating his defender on the drive these days) and getting stars benefits in charge/block situations is probably the most prominent way of NBA protecting their star guys. Which is a stark shift (for the better for me) from end of 00s, where the predominant way of protecting names was calling those little silly touch fouls. I still love the NBA basketball, but Ive been watching less and less regular season basketball every year because of the star protection, lack of diversity on offense thanks to league rules and general refusal from top teams (and players) to care about RS. In the playoffs, all of that goes away, and they are and will be, still awesome.
Satoransky is a great player for FIBA and even for the NBA, however most of Intl guys that truly made it had two separate mindsets, one for Intl game one for the NBA, Sato does not have that and that is why he will struggle somewhat in the NBA.