Professional basketball is a contact sport. Can someone please tell the refs this immediately, before they ruin the NBA playoffs. Obviously basketball is not on the level of football, hockey or rugby, but if you have played the game you know it gets physical and if you grew up watching the NBA you've witnessed how physical it can be. Playoff basketball was the modern day equivalent of titans battling one another in epic clashes of athleticism, skill and brute force. Legendary battles like Celtics versus the Sixers or Lakers in the 80's or Bulls versus the Knicks or Pacers in the 90's were staples of competitiveness. These games were incredible to watch during the regular season, but were completely on a different level come playoff time and there was never any question what a foul was back then because you would know it when you saw one.
Sadly those days are forgotten and are now replaced by the longest tenured trend in the NBA, the ticky-tack foul. If you just began watching the NBA this year, you'd think the entire NBA was full of overpaid she-males. Players like Rasheed Wallace and Dwight Howard actually have reasons to complain. If they so much as sweat on someone, they could be charged with a foul. It's truly sad when there have been at least a hundred moments when I've thought after watching an NBA game, did that team really lose or did the refs blow it? Granted on the great scheme of things an NBA referee can only do so much, but sometimes thats a lot more than they should. Players can't battle for rebounds now or stand up in the lane to defend a driver. If that player has momentum you had better get out of the way or a foul will be called, especially if that player is a star... *cough* *cough* Lebron James *cough*.
Even more surprising than all of this is the fact that the Cleveland "superstar" averages less fouls than any other starter in NBA history, in a foul happy league at that...Go figure...but that's for another time.
So as NBA fans what are supposed to do? The answer for that...nothing. We are stuck with this watered down league until David Stern is finally finished and even then who knows what would happen. All we need is one more player to be injured from a non-call and we will probably have games decided by free-throw contests instead of teams actually playing each other.
It's not like I am condoning injuring one another or desiring the league to be more like AND1 streetball, I'm just asking if the refs can swallow the whistle more often. Let the men be men and play the game the way it's supposed to be played.
