these espn guys make me so mad.

"dwyane wade didn't let foul trouble keep him from lighting up the pistons in game 1".

i will give them that wade shot the lights out (9-11). but his point total was 2 below his playoff average. So i believe that would be literally a sub-par game.

so then the espn guys would say: "but he only played 27 minutes because of fouls"

and i'm thinking, well, whose fault is that? since when is accumulating offensive fouls a kind of accident of nature or an act of god?

the fact is, fouls are part of the game and playing out of control is an offensive defect of wade's (just like not being able to go left might be for another player).

the pistons did a lot of things wrong in that game (including letting wade shoot 9 of 11), but one thing they did right was exploit wade's tendency to get out of control by drawing fouls on him. as far as i could tell, none of those calls were cheap calls. they were all clearly fouls.