TeamBall wrote:I don't know about the team as a whole but they don't seem to like Melo too much

TeamBall wrote:I don't know about the team as a whole but they don't seem to like Melo too much

I agree.

TeamBall wrote:I don't know about the team as a whole but they don't seem to like Melo too much

I agree with that- remember that Knicks Thunder game where they made a point of calling everything for Durant, and literally NOTHING for Melo- even when the the Thunder were intentionally fouling him at the end of the game? Felt like they were sending him a message

TripleThreat wrote:

fitzfarm wrote:I mean come on other teams abuse us when we have the ball and we get called for touch fouls all day long... I think teams know this and they play really aggressive vs the Knicks knowing the refs will not blow the whistle ... The nba needs to look into this!! ASAP !

I remember when Allen Iverson type merchandise was huge overseas, I mean HUGE. This was back when everything in the league was all about young Grant Hill, Kobe Bryant and The Answer himself.

James Harden ( more popular now that he was on the Rockets and got more international push with Lin on the team) and Dwayne Wade still get a good number of calls in their favor.

IMHO, the league works like this

- If your team fits the league's season long "narrative" about how they want the season to break down, then your team and your players will get the favorable ref calls

- If you as a player have massive international appeal and you move a ton of merchandise and and have "brand" appeal, then you will get favorable ref calls

- If the NBA decides it wants to focus a lot of it's marketing around you ( Blake Griffin with that dunk contest and Derrick Rose pre injury) , then you will get favorable ref calls.

- If the league prefers your team to advance in the playoffs for either narrative reasons or ratings reasons, then you will get favorable ref calls.

- If you have the ability to globalize the game, then you will get favorable ref calls.

When Lamar Odom and Kris Humphuries were both banging Kardashians, those dudes got away with a lot. It's not hard to rack up double doubles when you know you are gifted free contact above and beyond your non star competition. But that's how David Stern liked it. He wanted that celebrity juice during broadcasts. He wanted those legions of wannabe reality star sluts in the tween/pre teen age who worshipped Kim Kardashian to love the NBA because she was with an NBA guy.

If Chris Smith could sell 10 million pairs of Nikes this year based on his own "branding", he' be in the NBA right now. Shooting 60 free throws a game. Playing lock down defense ( because he would be able to drop kick opposing guards in the face) He would be on billboards. He would be on TV shilling for Coke or Gatorade or Nike or potato chips.

Notice, when Allen Iverson lost his international appeal ( as well as most of his talent), and stopped selling so many jerseys and shoes, then the refs, who always hated his guts, turned on him completely. He got ZERO calls. You could do whatever you wanted to Iverson in a game then. Hit him, spit on him, knee him, throw him to the ground. Do what you want, because he's not getting any calls.

I was amused to find out a few seasons ago that LBJ had a massive streak of games with zero fouls called against him. Would you want to be the ref to foul on LBJ before the 4th quarter in a huge matchup on national TV and had to face a David Stern afterword?

I think officiating is much better with Adam Silver ( if only he seems to understand competitive balancing is actually more profitable) but there are some elements of the Stern era you can't change.

Notice early on during Linsanity, he was getting hit a lot away from the cameras and away from the ball. But that stopped real fast. Because Stern wanted to globalize the game and it wasn't going to help having billions of Asians across the world watch some jilted black guy give Lin and elbow shiver and drag him to the ground.

Sadly the marketing for the NBA is driven by the individual player far more than the NFL and MLB and the NHL, and how officiating works can get wacky accordingly.

knicks1248 wrote:We're a passive team, if we were more aggressive going to the hole, we would get more calls. Melo is known to play bully ball, and we all know it, so he doesn't get the benefit of a doubt. All of our guards avoid contact like the plague, even our bigs, Smith, daly, acy, coles.

If we wanna get calls, be more aggressive, simple as that.

fitzfarm wrote:

StarksEwing1 wrote:

knicks1248 wrote:We're a passive team, if we were more aggressive going to the hole, we would get more calls. Melo is known to play bully ball, and we all know it, so he doesn't get the benefit of a doubt. All of our guards avoid contact like the plague, even our bigs, Smith, daly, acy, coles.

If we wanna get calls, be more aggressive, simple as that.

exactly. Look sometimes i complain about calls but i dont buy into the whole conspiracy against us for 2 reasons. First like you said we dont drive to the hoop enough and secondly our players whine too much about not getting calls

Players like Kobe,lbj,harden all wine too and they always get calls... Melo deserves the same treatment.. Stat gets hammered down low all game long with no whistle . He too as well as the whole team deserves more whistles, exp thjr got hammered on two transition plays last night with no whistle... Then we get called on little touch fouls on the other end even Clyde said something about the refs ... I just want to know what gives? I do agree we need to drive more, but we should be given the same respect as our opponent which really hasn't been the case.

smackeddog wrote:I always find it weird how some people justify BS calls to themselves- hearing stuff like 'bad teams get bad calls' etc- utter crap. There's no excuse for agenda based officiating- I can forgive bad officiating because it's not deliberate. One example that springs to mind is the blatant attempt to manufacture Hibbert into a star centre in the playoffs a couple of seasons ago. All that crap about 'he went straight up'!- sure came back down to earth with a bang when Silver took over and sent out an MO clamping down on that BS.