May 4th - New Orleans Pelicans VS Golden State - 29-36

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Originally Posted by Freyfamilyreuni

I saw this posted in another forum and thought it was interesting:

It’s different with Williamson, who doesn’t plant his flag on the block like O’Neal did. Instead, often moonlighting as a point guard, he’ll either drive the ball from the perimeter or catch a pass 15 feet out and then rumble in from there. By the time he reaches the basket, more than one defender will in all likelihood have had a chance to slow him down, complicating what officials have to deal with before a point of contact is made.

That uncanny combination of size and speed impacts the anticipatory decisions officials normally make. The three basic elements of refereeing are location adjustment, position adjustment and vision adjustment. There’s a lead official (somewhere along the baseline, ideally on the strong side), a slot official (free throw extended, near the sideline), and a trailer. Possessions involving Zion tweak their individual responsibilities a bit and force all three to focus on spots they otherwise don’t.

“When [the Pelicans] swing it back to the weak side, and Zion puts it down going to the basket, the lead doesn't have a chance to get there,” Vaden says. “And the slot is basically trying to referee that play by himself—with help, but there's a lot more pressure on [them] that way.”

In these spots, the lead official often has no choice but to observe from the opposite side of the lane, which isn’t preferable. Even still, referees don’t stare at Williamson so much as they focus on different defenders who appear on his path to the rim.

...“When he dunks the ball, you or I can reach out and hit him as hard as we want to, he's not even gonna feel it. He's going to be able to finish with power. And from a referee standpoint, they're trying to get their eyes to the point of contact, but he goes through it so powerful that you can't tell if he's hit or not,” Vaden says. “Most of the time, you're not gonna see it until you go to replay or go to the film session later and look at it in slow motion to see if there is actually contact or not.”

ETA: it was from an interview with a former ref.

Not sure that I buy it, but I thought this take was interesting. So what do you think? Is Zion attacking the basket so fast and so powerfully that the refs can't tell if he's being fouled?

ETA again: It also makes me think that the refs have gotten so conditioned to the over exagerated reaction that certain other basketball stars make, that they start to rely on it to decide if a foul occurred. Zion's lack of overexagerated reaction to contact is probably hurting him.

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I personally think they are excuses. They admit to punishing Zion because he doesn’t exaggerate contact. They admit that Zion can “get whacked as hard as possible and still not feel it.” What that tells me is they are biased against Zion in the sense that he’d get 50 calls a night if they didn’t allow defenses to hack him on the way to the basket (which doesn’t even take into account him getting blooded at the rim). But it’s okay because “he doesn’t feel it.” Saying they don’t see the contact because of his brute strength is quite frankly nonsense and an excuse. They see it.

The issue is not that they should call it 50 times a game. They should call it enough so that teams aren’t incentivized to just hack away at him all night knowing they won’t face repercussions. That is the difference between us winning and losing more games. That is the difference in defenses being impenetrable and Zion standing a fair chance to make something happen.

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Originally Posted by As I See It

My Four Word Response...

Lebron James
Giannis Antetokounmpo

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I think Giannis is a good comparable. Lebron not so much. In fact Zion gets to the line a lot more then Lebron does. (At least this year not sure about early Lebron).

Giannis definitely gets to the line more than Zion. The question is why? I mean Giannis probably has more respect from the refs because he’s been in the league longer and won an mvp. He’s also longer than Zion, so if contact is made it’s probably easier to tell because he’s extended over the defender in most cases.

Zion is often scoring coming from under guys, so maybe that’s a factor. Perhaps the refs don’t see an contact on Zion’s arms and are ignoring the contact on his body?

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Originally Posted by Freyfamilyreuni

I think Giannis is a good comparable. Lebron not so much. In fact Zion gets to the line a lot more then Lebron does. (At least this year not sure about early Lebron).

Giannis definitely gets to the line more than Zion. The question is why? I mean Giannis probably has more respect from the refs because he’s been in the league longer and won an mvp. He’s also longer than Zion, so if contact is made it’s probably easier to tell because he’s extended over the defender in most cases.

Zion is often scoring coming from under guys, so maybe that’s a factor. Perhaps the refs don’t see an contact on Zion’s arms and are ignoring the contact on his body?

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Zion's FTr this year is .510, which is ever so slightly higher than Lebron's career high FTr (.506).

By comparison, it's lower than Embiid has had in 4 of his 5 career seasons (.569, .442, .541, .543, .610) and lower than Giannis has had in 2 of his last 3 seasons (.550, .508, .529), and those are the only guys who take a comparable number of at-rim attempts (and Zion actually takes more than either of them, so for him to have to one of the lower FTrs among all three despite being the smallest makes fairly little sense).

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

Zion's FTr this year is .510, which is ever so slightly higher than Lebron's career high FTr (.506).

By comparison, it's lower than Embiid has had in 4 of his 5 career seasons (.569, .442, .541, .543, .610) and lower than Giannis has had in 2 of his last 3 seasons (.550, .508, .529), and those are the only guys who take a comparable number of at-rim attempts (and Zion actually takes more than either of them, so for him to have to one of the lower FTrs among all three despite being the smallest makes fairly little sense).

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Well technically being smaller may be the answer. It’s easier to block a smaller guy at the rim than a bigger guy without fouling. Now I agree, Zion’s not getting enough calls. The questions is why? Do the refs not like him or respect him? I would assume that it’s not a conspiracy from on high, because the NBA is probably very invested in getting another marketable superstar. So why would they have their refs sabotage that effort?

So that takes me back to the quote from the former ref. Is it possible that Zion is too fast and explosive for the refs to be in position to tell if he’s fouled or not?

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Originally Posted by Freyfamilyreuni

Well technically being smaller may be the answer. It’s easier to block a smaller guy at the rim than a bigger guy without fouling. Now I agree, Zion’s not getting enough calls. The questions is why? Do the refs not like him or respect him? I would assume that it’s not a conspiracy from on high, because the NBA is probably very invested in getting another marketable superstar. So why would they have their refs sabotage that effort?

So that takes me back to the quote from the former ref. Is it possible that Zion is too fast and explosive for the refs to be in position to tell if he’s fouled or not?

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I don't really believe that's the case. Of course there's always a margin of error, that's just natural; nobody expects refs to catch every single foul every single time, because it's just not realistic.

But we know that refs call things at their own discretion sometimes; if they didn't, and called every foul precisely as written in the rule book, the games would last 6 hours and every player would take 28 FTs a night or foul out. Kyrie would average 19 turnovers a game from palming violations. They just don't call everything, and frankly in general I'm fine with that. So I'm certain that at least some of the time, the refs are seeing a foul and not calling it because they've called too many in the last few minutes or they think he's had enough: SVG has said in post-game interviews that he has literally had refs ask him how many free throws he's shot mid-game and adjust their calls based on that. It's absurd.

All I'm asking them is to call the obvious ones. If there's a touch of contact on the elbow for Zion and they don't call it, fine. If someone technically reaches but it doesn't impact his drive whatsoever, fine. But at least three or four times a game he gets hammered in some way and it's a no call.

There are multiple people on Twitter who have done threads of stupid non-calls that have happened to Zion and they're like 20 clips long of blatant fouls. Here's a tweet from one of those threads:

No calls on any of these pic.twitter.com/HiQyYpN0yO

— jesse (@jah_318) April 29, 2021

If you click through to that post, you find a thread of about 20 blatant, uncalled fouls and then at the bottom there's a link to another thread by someone else detailing another 50+ non-calls:

We have been very outspoken about how Zion Williamson gets officiated.

I finally have time to sit down and watch EVERY SINGLE Zion shot attempt so far this season.#Pelicans

— GHOST (@NolaGhostSports) February 23, 2021

Do I expect the refs to call every single one of these? No, and some of them are pretty light so maybe you don't even call them fouls at all, that's fine. But it's fairly clear at this point that there are a lot of fouls on Zion that refs are just choosing not to call, and it's an issue. Zion is shooting fewer FTs a game than Trae Young, for God's sake.

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

Zion's FTr this year is .510, which is ever so slightly higher than Lebron's career high FTr (.506).

By comparison, it's lower than Embiid has had in 4 of his 5 career seasons (.569, .442, .541, .543, .610) and lower than Giannis has had in 2 of his last 3 seasons (.550, .508, .529), and those are the only guys who take a comparable number of at-rim attempts (and Zion actually takes more than either of them, so for him to have to one of the lower FTrs among all three despite being the smallest makes fairly little sense).

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The reason why there is an apparent imbalance between Lebron and Zion in favor of Zion is because Zion lives at the rim; LBJ doesn't. This even makes the meager imbalance more stark. Five times in his career, LBJ has superseded 700 attempts; Giannis never has.

https://www.basketball-reference.com...ta_season.html

Brandon Ingram Injury Update: pic.twitter.com/GdU8hWHKmW

— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) May 5, 2021

Ingram will be out next game

???GOOD NEWS???

NAW has been upgraded to Questionable for Friday Night's Game. Also, Warrior, Kelly Oubre, Jr is out for two weeks.