Please note, this is not a conspiracy theory or formal accusation. Well, just a little… You have no doubt read the pithy declarations of Rudy Gobert on arbitration, after those no less lapidary of Fred VanVleet, and more and more players are criticizing the preferential treatment given to teams from the big markets. By taking a look at the differential of the Los Angeles Lakers in terms of free throws taken and free throws conceded, we say to ourselves that the discontent will go crescendo …
We can always invoke different styles of play, less focused on the drive for some, more aggressive towards the circle for others, to try to explain certain disparities. But the…
The Lakers have the highest differential in the entire NBA with +428 (2027 obtained, 1599 conceded). The gap with the second in this ranking, Sacramento, is absurd. The Kings are at +205 (1941 obtained, 1736). The other top 5 teams are at +174 (Miami), +154 (New York) and +139 (Orlando). Los Angeles is therefore both the team that gets the most shots in the NBA and the one that concedes the least.
Admittedly, the group coached by Darvin Ham has players who have always caused mistakes in their careers and whose game partly explains this particularity. Except that with such differences, difficult not to say that, consciously or not, there is a bias that is favorable to them.
In the “bottom 5”, we find the Warriors, dead last, who have never made their money with throws and display a frightening -402. Rudy Gobert will also be able to point the finger at the fact that the Wolves are the team against which officials whistle the most shots in the NBA (2016) and are even the only ones to have reached and exceeded the 2000 mark.
We can very well succeed in our season by being negative on this differential, since the Nuggets are for example at -40, but are leading the Western Conference. This will not prevent one from wondering if the league, via its referees, does not work so that a team like the Lakers, with its media power, avoids a pure and simple absence from the play-in. This is not the only explanation, since the Lakers are generally much better since the deadline, but we cannot ignore this parameter.
Rudy Gobert hits hard on refereeing: ‘Hard to believe they didn’t try to help them win’
