Re: ? on Walker

[Kestutis.Kveraga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Kestutis Kveraga)]

--- You wrote:
Kestas - certainly you must understand that AWbs style of play 
simply does not raise a red flag on foul shots and never will.  It has 
been like that throughout his career, and with good reason.

As for the many posters (along with Homer Heinsohn) who continually 
blame the hostile Helen Keller refs for our every foul and our every 
loss, our season fouls per game average stands at 22.4; our opponents' 
fouls per game stands at 23.2.  Where is the conspiracy? 

Last night we were called for 23 personal fouls while Philly was 
ungraciously in their own home, called for 24. 
--- end of quote ---

First, I'm not blaming our loss fouls that were not called for us, I'm
explaining why it isn't entirely Walker's fault that his shooting line was
7-24. If you read to the end of my post, you should have seen that I gave
credit to Philly for pulling out the game. 

Second, your citing of approximate parity in TEAM fouls last night is
meaningless, because lost in this collapsed statistic is the fact that Walker
was "officially" fouled in the act of shooting only 3 - or fewer - times. (He
attempted 6 foul shots, no 'and 1's as I recall, and  some of those  those FTs
could've been for non-shooting fouls). Now, he attempted 16 shots from the 
2-point land, most of them around the basket. Are you saying he got fouled on
at most 3 of those shots? 

You could argue that everybody gets fouled a lot, they just don't call every
foul. Yet Antoine, while second in minutes per game, is only 39th in free
throws attempted.  Why the discrepancy?  Why does Iverson, playing only 12 sec.
per game more than Antoine, attempt more than twice as many free throws (9.9 to
4.3) if  Antoine is NOT being treated unfairly? You could say that Alley I. is
an exceptional case (and he  is, as one does not need to touch him to be called
for a foul) - he has attempted nearly 400 2-point shots this season. But even
Pierce, with similar attempts and minutes to Walkers, gets more than twice as
many fouls called for him (9). 

Third, what does it mean to say that "Antoine's style of play does not raise a
red flag on foul shots"? He either gets fouled, or he doesn't, and anyone who
watches the games, knows that he does - a lot. What does he need to do to draw
a foul? Embellish? Let out a scream every time he gets hit? Become buddies with
the refs? Why should it be necessary to be liked or feared by the refs, or to
flail about and yell like you've been shot to draw a foul? The wildly different
treatment of players by the refs just kills me. It's enough for Antoine to just
look askance at the ref to earn a T, but Jordan or Iverson can scream in the
ref's face, cuss him out in front of 20000 people, and nothing happens.  
Kestas