Is Dwight Howard Getting a Raw Deal from NBA Referees?

Dwight Howard scored just 16 points on 6-of-18 shooting in the 99-76 loss to the Phoenix Suns as the Suns galloped away from the Lakers in the fourth quarter with a frustrated Dwight Howard getting no calls.

We tend to see it every day. A bigger guy gets the ball fed to him in the post, and because he is so big, the same amount of contact that would warrant a foul on a smaller player leads to idle whistles from the referees.

The bigger, stronger and harder it is to move a player, the more he has to be visibly disturbed to earn a foul call.

It's just something that comes with the territory.

Howard seemed to think that Monday's game against the Suns was an excessively physical game, especially when you consider that he only took five free throws (Via Dave McMenamin):

A lot of stuff happened in the paint. For me, I just got to do my best and not say anything to the refs. I know it’s hard, but I’ll continue to talk to myself and push myself to leave the referees alone and hopefully they might look down there a couple times. But until then, I just got to keep fighting through it. If I don’t get a call, just keep going back down there and do the same thing.

Just continue to play through fouls. There was a lot of times where they were intentionally trying to foul and they weren’t called. They even said it, ‘I fouled the crap out of you on that play,’ and we’d just laugh about it. But there’s nothing I can do but try not to say anything to the referees and just play through it.

Howard has come to expect a certain amount of contact over the course of this season as he's been intentionally fouled to send him to the free-throw line quite a bit this year.

He's a poor free throw shooter, so when he claims that players were telling him that they were intentionally trying to foul him, it's not that far-fetched. 



Article Source: Bleacher Report - Los Angeles Lakers