Fraternizing with the Enemy- SfS chats with Nate from Denver Stiffs

That’s right. Denver played last night. You guys have a deep enough roster that I think you’ll still give us all we can handle.

I hear you, but I feel the same way when the Spurs are on the losing end of it. I have always felt that Duncan, for example, gets no extra respect from the officials, often getting mauled by his defender without a foul being called. Certainly he does not get nearly the kind of calls that a Kobe Bryant or a Dwayne Wade get routinely. At least that’s the way it seems to me. Am I biased? Sure. It is hard to remain objective when it’s your team.

If you are asking how it is that Duncan gets no fouls against him last night, and I am not sure that’s what you mean, but let’s take last night. He played 20 minutes, total. I don’t recall a lot of plays in which his man scored with Duncan on him, or plays where Duncan was trying to defend the rim against a scorer. Maybe I am just forgetting, but again, he didn’t see that many minutes. I do recall a couple of plays where I thought some Spurs got fouled, and the whistle wasn’t blown. Last night, it went both ways. Such is life. I feel your pain.

The Spurs used to get routinely beat up on by the Jazz back in the early nineties, and as a Spurs fan, there is a tendency to think your team is getting the shaft when they can’t get over the hump. Maybe there is some truth to it, and maybe it just feels that way from a fan’s perspective. Officiating is a pretty subjective business, and there is no way to do it perfectly. The Spurs have definitely lost games in which officiating played a role, but I prefer to believe that the refs are doing the best job they can and have no grudge against my team, and that they make honest mistakes. That’s probably easier to say when your team has won titles, I know. Many Spurs fans feel like the Spurs are always the team that the NBA powers-that-be would prefer not win versus the sexier opponent—the Suns of yesteryear, the Lakers any year, Lebron’s Cavs. And although that may or may not be the case, I really think the officials try to to their job without considering those factors.

Having said all that, I think it’s important for players and coaches to not whine and look for excuses after a loss. You lose a game by one or two possessions, it’s much more constructive to focus on things you could have done differently on offense or defense on a few more possessions. Anyway, last night’s game was intense, and you guys have a great team, and I’m sure we will have some more good battles this year.

I appreciate your take. There are multiple areas there that can be addressed:

How does TD avoid fouls? Quite frankly, you’d have to have watched his career with an unbiased (or biased) eye to know that he knows exactly what he’s doing. His greatness is in not wasting motion or effort in what he does and in being exactly where he’s supposed to be on both ends. Though his athleticism has obviously declined, his career ability as a help defender has been unmatched. It’s difficult to appreciate these things when your team is playing against these players, especially in hyper competitive situations like playoff series. I didn’t appreciate the physical play, discipline or screen setting of Stockton/Malone/Hornacek until after they retired. While playing, I always felt they were getting way with murder. Upon reflection, my Spurs at that time just weren’t the better team.

Does TD get away with a foul or two on the defensive end in many games? Likely yes, as all great defenders do. But in those same games, does he get fouled in the paint by his defender (Nene, Birdman, Najera, Camby) more than is called? Absolutely. As a fan, you notice the former, suspect incorrectly that there’s more, but ignore the latter or assume it was a great play your team. Refs know this and usually these things balance out. Good refs also cut stars some slack on one end of the court since they know we’re not there to see them fill the air with whistles.

I can assure you that the spurs are not an NBA A-List team. If only. Check out the number of national TV games they are receiving this season. They played the Mavs Thursday night (the best rivalry in the NBA the past 9 years) yet it wasn’t one of the two TNT games. They received the least amount of publicity a 61-team with 4 O’Brien trophies could ever hope to have last season. Their playoff games are not the top discussed or featured on network TV unless they’re playing LAL. And, one of the top 5 players of the past decade, Manu, receive nowhere near the attention, hype, All-Star votes, commercials, or ref favoritism of many other players.

I can only tell you that when I was younger, I hated the Jazz, Suns and even Blazers because they always seemed to defeat the Spurs when it mattered, and the Spurs won in their respective arenas about once every five years. It was easy to blame the refs. eh harder truth was that those teams had more talent, better coaching, and played better as a team than my guys did. Or, when all else was equal, they were more mature in end of game situations. It’s hard to appreciate that from the losing side but the better team won then as now and deserved to because they earned it, not due to any concern from Stern. He’s too busy watching a Lakers game to care about the rest. =)

Just focusing on that game related to that thread, Spurs had 2 more personal fouls. Nuggets also had 26 free throw attempts to the Spurs 18. They only made 17 of them though. We can sit and debate every no call, and some are missed, but they usually are missed both ways.

Everyone else covered the overall “reffing”