Does Carmelo Get the Calls?

The Rotation is a weekly study on the NBA by one of our All-Star voices. In rotation this week is Brett Pollakoff, who talks to Nuggets coach George Karl and some of his players about whether the refs are short-changing Carmelo Anthony.


Carmelo Anthony has an aggressive offensive game that is predicated on getting to the basket -- and to the free-throw line. Anthony is near the top of the league in free throws attempted per game, but George Karl thinks he should be getting there a lot more often. Considering that Denver as a team leads the league in free throws attempted per game, that's a bold statement. But regardless of how many free throws the Nuggets already shoot, might there be some validity to Karl's complaint?

The Nuggets' coach began speaking about which way the whistles blow after his team's apparently frustrating win over the Wizards last week. I'm not sure how you can be mad at the officials after a win in which your team shoots 33 free throws, but maybe we should ask Linas Kleiza, who was fined $25,000 for "verbally abusing" the refs afterwards. Anyway, Karl's comments about Anthony's lack of calls went like this.

"Melo gets beat up more than any other player in the NBA without getting a whistle," said Karl. "And I've watched game after game after game. Melo gets smacked. Smacked. And doesn't get a whistle. We attack the rim. We get to the rim more than most teams in the NBA. They get little touch fouls, and we get body contact."

Again, the Nuggets lead the league in free throw attempts per game at over 30, so it seems kind of crazy for a team that gets to the line that much to complain about a lack of calls, right? Not according to Karl, who believes that since his team does shoot the most free throws, that the refs may be looking for reasons not to make some calls.

"Sometimes I think there's almost a punishment for shooting the most free throws in the league," Karl said. "It's like we get labeled. 'What are you complaining about? You shoot the most free throws in the league.' Well, every possession is different. Every possession is new. Just because we got four calls doesn't mean the next call shouldn't come. You referee the game possession by possession."

The conversation continued this week in Phoenix, before the Nuggets dropped a thriller to the Suns. Karl talked about the reason for his frustration, and explained that his team's aggressive, attack-the-rim style deserves more calls than say, a jump-shooting team does.

"I think we're frustrated because we don't know what else to do," Karl said. "We've been sending the films in, and again, my feeling is just basically, we get a lot of fouls, but we sacrifice a lot of our possessions to attack the rim.

"Someone once said, well, referees get tired of blowing the whistle," he continued. "I think that happens with us sometimes, they don't want to give us all the fouls that occur because we do it so often. We're not a jump shooting team and we don't run a lot of execution plays. We believe in playing early, getting into gaps, go to the rim, and find the shot."

I believe that Karl actually has a point here, but there's a fine line. We've all seen games that are extremely physical from the start, and at some point, the referees have to adjust to what kind of game is being played, and make their calls accordingly. As much as we might not want to admit it, officiating in the NBA is extremely subjective. A foul in the first quarter isn't always going to be called a foul late in the fourth quarter, and, like it or not, superstars like LeBron James are going to get calls that other players simply will not.

Which brings us back to Carmelo Anthony.

Now Anthony, like the rest of the Nuggets, gets to the line plenty. He's currently ninth in the league in free throws attempted at 7.2 per game, which puts him in some pretty good company. Other players in the seven range include Amare Stoudemire, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant. Players that he's ahead of include Paul Pierce, Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan, and Brandon Roy.

Speaking of Roy, that's one of the players that Karl singled out as getting more favorable treatment from the officials, when he discussed the amount of hard fouls that his player seems to take on a nightly basis.

"I know you all see some of the hits he takes and the whistle doesn't blow. I know you do," Karl said. "We see them, we watch 'em on film and, then you watch some other guys like Brandon Roy or Kevin Martin, they get every little bump in the world. Seemingly their style or their rhythm, the referees blow the whistle. And I know that happens. I know there's certain guys that look like they're forcing the issue and other guys look like they're getting hit."

That's a key point right there: the fact that maybe forcing the issue or trying to create the contact may eventually turn the refs off, and that they'll eventually see it as a player just trying to get to the line instead of being fouled on a legitimate shot attempt.

When I asked Suns' head coach Alvin Gentry about Carmelo and the officials, he seemed to think that this was an important distinction as well.

"I think with Carmelo he's a little bit like Shaq for a referee in that he creates a lot of contact," Gentry said. "He's a real physical player, so there is a lot of contact. Does he get fouled more than is called? I don't know, probably. You know, Shaq probably gets fouled more than anybody in the NBA. So, I can see why [Karl] would say that and I understand where he's coming from.

"But [Carmelo] is a physical player and a lot of times he creates the contact himself," Gentry continued. "Do you call that? I don't know, you'd have to talk to the refs on that one."

Since the refs don't typically do interviews, that wasn't really an option. But going back to the general subjectiveness of officiating in the league, some players get more respect than others in terms of creating contact -- like Lebron James, for example.

James is second in the league in total free throws attempted this season, behind only Dwight Howard. And it's indisputable that in plenty of instances, LeBron has no desire to get off a legitimate basketball shot; he's simply trying to create contact and get to the free throw line. We've all seen his move where he drives into a defender head first, and makes contact in that defender's chest with his head before going up for a shot. There's not much more of a blatant attempt to create contact than that, yet James gets those calls again and again.

Carmelo isn't yet on the level of a LeBron, and he probably never will be. (This is not a knock on Anthony, by the way -- only Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade are even mentioned in the same breath at this point, and most of those conversations end with LeBron being called the best of the three.) Again, "superstars" just get treated differently in this league than the players that are simply "stars." The bottom line is, if Carmelo wants to get more of what he and his coach feel is a fairer share of the calls, then he's going to have to attack the basket with the intent of scoring, rather than just trying to get to the foul line.

We'll have to see if Karl's comments or his sending video for the league to review will end up having any effect on the calls his team gets; I kind of doubt it. One thing it did do, however, is make a positive move towards building his rocky relationship with Anthony. I asked Carmelo what he thought of his coach going to bat for him like that, and Carmelo smiled as he gave his response.

"We're going to see how it plays out," Anthony said. "It's good that George stepped up and said what he said."