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很有趣的文章 不過我要下班了...沒時間翻了 XD
Selling the call
The best performances in the playoffs often come just before the ref's whistle
By Alyssa Roenigk
ESPN The Magazine
全文
http://bbs.hoopchina.com/1277352.html
原文
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2010/insider/news/story?id=5161681
"Everyone lives by selling something." When Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson spoke those words the game of basketball had yet to be invented. Yet he might as well have been giving a pregame speech to an NBA playoff team. Because the hard sell -- getting the refs to believe they saw something where there sometimes was nothing -- is often as important as remembering to pack the dark jerseys for road games.
Caveat Emptor
Bernie Fryer, director of NBA officials, tells why some sales pitches are easier to spot than others. READ
Selling a foul, in any sport, is no different from selling a Ford. Whether it's pass interference, a double-play tag or a straight-out World Cup flop, sales is a professional athlete's side job. And any great salesman will tell you that the art of selling is in the details: subtle yet persuasive body language, the fostering of relationships, building a reputation. For an NBA player, a successful sale generally means the opportunity to score points, stop the clock, send an opponent's star to the bench or
make a defender back off a team's go-to guy. But in the playoffs, when the stakes are higher and every point means more, it is much tougher to close the deal.
Take this blown sale in Game 4 of the 2008 Western Conference finals between the Lakers and Spurs: With 2.1 seconds remaining, his team down by two in the game and 2-1 in the series, Spurs shooting guard Brent Barry took the inbounds pass from Robert Horry way beyond the top of the arc. He turned and found Lakers point guard Derek Fisher in his face. Barry set his feet, pump-faked and drew Fisher into the air. Barry then lowered his body, took a dribble and a step toward the basket. But as Fisher's left
hip collided with Barry's left shoulder, Barry backed away from the contact, reset and launched the shot as time expired. He missed. No foul call, no basket and, after a loss in the next game, no trip to the Finals.
Spurs fans shouted, "Conspiracy!" and attacked ref Joey Crawford for swallowing his whistle. But pundits took Barry to task for not working the sell hard enough. "The key is to force the official to make the call," says Thunder big man Nick Collison, who was second in the NBA in drawing offensive fouls this season. "You have to earn the call."
The groundwork for that is often laid in the film room. Players study the tendencies of opponents, their movement patterns and the tricks they use to hide the fact they've committed a foul. Then they scout the refs. "This is called qualification, where a salesman finds out what a person needs and will say yes to," says Tom Hopkins, author of How to Master the Art of Selling. "Refs, like all people, are influenced by the way they feel about the person who is selling to them, by their reputation and by
whether they like and trust the person. As a salesman it is important to know the people who can affect your long-term success, and that means knowing every ref in the league."
When a player is peddling a charge, for example, the art of the sale begins early in a possession, by anticipating the actions of every guy on the floor. If a defender beats his man into position, one of two things will happen: He will draw contact -- or he won't. Either way, if he guessed right early in the play, he'll get the benefit of the doubt at the end of it. "Refs are gullible to what they don't see, so they are gullible to players who are better actors," says Jared Dudley, one of the Suns'
long-range specialists. Adds Jazz forward Carlos Boozer: "Playoff ball is a man's game. You get your Oscars hat on and do what you do. Yell a little bit." In other words, sell the foul.
Bruce Bowen, an ESPN NBA analyst who spent most of his 13-year NBA career with the Spurs, remembers an Oscar-worthy performance from the 2007 playoffs against the Nuggets. With Denver up 87-83 and 1:36 left in the game, Carmelo Anthony drew contact from Spurs point Tony Parker and sprouted wings. "The ref called a foul on Tony. But it would take Tony, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Shaq to make Carmelo fly like that," Bowen says. "He sold it."
For those who hear "selling" and think "faking," it's important to know there's a huge difference. We're not talking about phantom contact and the subsequent dive. This is more subtle. NBAers institute the very little-known Fourth Law of Motion: A body fouled will accentuate the contact so as to get the call. Eric Musselman, former coach of the Kings and Warriors, preached that his players use contact for a competitive advantage. "We talked about finding the defender, lifting him off his feet and
jumping into his body. That helped the team every quarter by getting into the bonus early," says Musselman. "None of that is faking it. That's just selling the call."
Star players are especially good at making a little out of a lot. "When we're talking about players like Kobe and Kevin Durant, who get fouled a lot and have guys on them all night long," says Lakers forward Pau Gasol, "it's part of their job to make sure the referees see that and make the calls. But if a referee thinks you are overselling it, he won't give you the call. You have to understand who is refereeing the game and what his tendencies are."
Michael Jordan was a legendary pitchman who all but perfected the art of drawing a call on the reach-in. "It's a classic. You reach; I teach," says Bowen. The sleight of hand is performed when a defender reaches in, and the player who's dribbling pulls his hand off the ball to make it look like their hands got tangled up. The official sees the contact and calls a defensive foul. "Jordan was the best at it," Bowen says. "But Kobe, Dwyane Wade, they all do it. Some players think it's a cheap foul. But
it's really a smart tactic."
Until February, Reggie Miller held the league's all-time mark for four-point plays with 23. After nearly every shot, Miller kicked his legs out, splayed his arms and fell dramatically off balance. Everyone knew the move. But rarely did Miller take a shot from beyond the arc without drawing contact or at least making the refs believe his shot had been compromised.
Hawks guard Jamal Crawford, who now holds the record at 28 and this season added the league's Sixth Man Award to his mantel, employs similar, if more dramatic, tactics. "When Jamal takes a three, if anyone is near him, he will yell and fall as if someone had tackled him," says teammate Marvin Williams. "Sometimes you see the contact, and sometimes you don't, but you always hear his screams. He makes the refs feel he couldn't land or couldn't fully extend to take the shot. He does a great job of drawing
fouls and selling them."
Players who are less than A-listers need their own tricks. And they need to be better at making them believable. Some players sell the foul by exaggerating contact after a pump fake (see: What Barry Didn't Do). Others make sure they are always in a ref's direct line of sight or they use convincing facial expressions, sounds and head snaps. "If you're pump-faking and jumping into somebody, you want to get enough contact to where it's a foul and then add a little onto it," says Cavaliers guard Anthony
Parker. "You throw your head back or yell, 'Ahh!' or 'Hey!' You try to force the ref to make a call."
Collison says that when he shared a locker room in Seattle with Raptors forward Reggie Evans, he was amazed at how Evans could deal a blow on defense but control his own body movement enough to convince officials he'd taken a hit. "It frustrates players," Collison says, "and he's valuable because of it."
But players, especially defenders, walk a fine line between being labeled as tough as nails or someone who oversells minor contact. "The first eight to 10 years of my career I picked up a reputation as a flopper," Fisher says. "In the past five years, I've gotten away from trying to sell. Either the refs are going to call it or they aren't. But I'm not going to sell it."
He might not be selling -- and most of Fisher's peers would check the box next to "strongly disagree" with that statement -- but NBA refs are still being sold. In the past five years, Fisher's gone to the line an average of 4.3 times per 48 minutes, compared with an average of 3.9 times in his first nine seasons. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Selling a call is a knack, much like having a sick crossover dribble or the ability to drain 30-footers. It doesn't come naturally to every NBA player, including Steve Nash, who led the NBA in free throw shooting this season. "There's a skill to getting calls by showing the contact or highlighting that you were touched," says the Suns point guard and former two-time MVP. "But it's not my skill. I don't get extra calls." It's hard to argue with him. This season, Nash was awarded only 225 free throw
attempts. Durant, the attempts leader, took 840 while becoming the youngest player in NBA history to win the scoring title.
Of course, the free throw line is where the best salesmen become playoff legends. Because that is where the most important part of the sell takes place: Closing the deal.
Alyssa Roenigk is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine.
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