I'm not sure where PtR has come up with that 13-1 number for Foster. They've been good with Foster, but I can't see a s
In the Big 3 era, they're 12-3 with Foster in the playoffs (2 of the 3 losses were in home games -- Game 2 of the 2013 ECF v. IND and Game 6 of the 2011 NBA Finals v. DAL; the other was Game 3 of the 2012 ECF at Boston).
Including the 2012-13 regular season, they're 10-1 with Foster in this NBA year; and if you go back to the 2012 playoffs, they have won 12 of 13 (but not 13 of 14) with Foster. I'm not sure the regular season says much, since their 6 regular season games with Foster were:
vs. Brooklyn (in early December)
at Orlando (on New Year's Eve)
vs. LA Lakers (in February)
vs. Orlando (in March)
at Boston (in March)
vs. Chicago (in April)
With all of that said, if there's a game manipulator working in these playoffs, it's Foster and that scares me -- I kept an eye on him in a few deadball situations during Game 4 (just out of curiosity) and noticed on several occasions that he sort of hacked his arm, as if making a signal to another official, then pointed a finger at the other end of the floor, only to have something called on the other end (and on a couple of occasions, the calls seemed iffy). It could have been something totally innocuous; sometimes officials make that signal to seemingly remind others on the crew that a particular team has a foul to give or something like that and I didn't notice those signals in a time where that seemed necessary. But the correlation was, um, surprising. (He made similar signals to his crewmates (from my observation and recollection) shortly before Duncan's flurry of fouls in Game 2 of the West Finals.). I agree that he has more leeway to do that (and to dictate that games be called that way) when he's the crew chief and I'm somewhat relieved that the league made Danny Crawford the chief rather than Foster.
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