The Houston Rockets are engaged in a first round Western Conference playoff series with the Utah Jazz, which plays a style of basketball that reminds one of professional wrestling. Inasmuch as the Rockets play a rather plodding style of ball that revolves around their two stars — Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming — and attempts to minimize below-average players at the point guard and power forward positions, the first four games in this series have bordered on being unwatchable.
The fifth game in the series took place in Houston last night and began in the same boring manner as the first four. Then, midway through the second quarter, seemingly out of nowhere, the style of play quickened for both teams, players on both teams began hitting shots that they had previously missed for much of the series, and presto! — a real NBA playoff game broke out. The Rockets went on to win the surprisingly entertaining affair to take a 3-2 lead in the best of seven series.
One of the absurdities of NBA basketball is that the referees are often wildly inconsistent in the way in which they call fouls on certain dominant centers, allowing the opposing teams to pummel away on the big guys relentlessly without calling fouls, while calling fouls against the center that the refs wouldn’t think of whistling if the same action was inflicted on the center. Wilt Chamberlain was probably the first NBA center to endure this treatment, but many others — including Shaquille O’Neal recently — have experienced the same thing.
Well, the Rockets’ Yao is definitely experiencing this syndrome in the current series as the Jazz players hammer away on him with impunity. One image from the end of last night’s game speaks volumes about the absurdity of this syndrome. With over three seconds left in the game with the Rockets up by four points, Yao grabbed a rebound of a missed Utah shot and was grabbed by Utah’s Carlos Boozer to stop the clock. Although Utah’s chances were slim at that point, 3+ seconds in an NBA game is still enough time to get off a shot or two. Nevertheless, the referees refused to call a foul on Boozer, no matter how much he grabbed Yao. With a resigned look of “what the hell,” Yao finally just tossed the ball to one of the refs as the final few tenths of a second ran off the clock and started trudging toward the locker room, with scatches and bruises all over his arms clearly visible.
So it goes in the life of a big NBA center.
An appropriate image
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