Favortism?

[Hawks Coach]

My experience has been that basketball is a contact sport. Some contact is incidental to the game, other contact creates an unfair advantage and is rightly penalized.

There is a reason that some teams are favored. They know how to use their size and strength to their legal advantage. The un-informed watch a physical game where the fouls seem to go one way and don't realize that the refs are calling it exactly how they should. Fans of the losing side think that the refs are calling the game in a way that benefits the favorite.

Frequently, in reality, the stronger team's players are in an advantageous position when contact occurs, and they become the rightful beneficiary of foul calls. They are one step quicker to the loose balls, and get most of the calls when there is contact contesting those balls. What looks like a call that could go either way is called in favor of the player who started out in the advantageous position.

It takes watching a lot of games, and the ability to separate yourself from what you want to happen, to understand this when it happens to a team you support.