by Lundberg - May 27, 2010 - - 1 Comment »
Everyone knows (well, not everyone, just the people who are familiar with me) that I’m a huge NBA fan. I love the league and defend it to anyone who dares speak foul upon it (Punslung!). However, if I had to pick the one thing I’d fix, it’d take me about a millisecond to come up with my answer…the officials.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those David Stern conspiracy theorists. That line of thinking is retarded. If you are reading this and you buy into that nonsense, I suggest you invest some time partaking in rational thought. If Stern was Vince McMahon-esque, I’m fairly certain LeBron James would still be in the playoffs and I’m just as certain he’d be facing Kobe Bryant in the Finals.
I also have some reservations about laying the kind of criticism on the officials that I’m about to. Basketball is a tough game to officiate. And the players don’t make it easier between flopping (Anderson Varejao, Manu Ginobilli), acting like they were just slashed by a grizzly bear on every hit (Paul Pierce) and making faces that look like they just tasted sour milk and watched their girlfriend make out with another dude at the same time (Kendrick Perkins). Sometimes the refs do an excellent job. Really, if you think about it, any well-called game is a commendable accomplishment.
Then there are the other times, when they are atrocious, which is way more often than it should be. They have a tendency to take control of the game, in an extremely negative way. On some of these occasions they just call fouls for the sake of calling fouls and don’t allow the game to get into flow. Other times, they dole out technicals for barely anything. It appears in these instances as if they are making the game about them and metaphorically waving around their little referee.
I think this has happened for a couple reasons. One, the image hit the league took after the Ron Artest incident at the Palace. The NBA didn’t want that to be perpetuated so they gave refs the power to undercut players and as a result took the emotion out of the game. Baseball players are allowed to put their hands on their hips and shake their head and yell like an idiot for 30 seconds before they get tossed. If a basketball player swings his arm in disgust, he gets T’d up. The other problem is that many of the officials are just too old and stubborn. The stubborness comes from not wanting to be showed up. This leads to a quick whistle. The oldness just leads to missed calls; either because they are too slow to get to the play or just can’t see clearly.
It is not a crisis yet. But if the league wants the name Tim Donaghy to go away and if they just want the best product possible, they’ll consider revamping the officiating and maybe even bringing in a whole new breed of refs.
It’s a tough sport to officiate. It’s also tough to stomach some of the officiating. (And for the record, I hate baseball umpires too.)
Tags: basketball, celtics, nba, Sports
lol remember when pierce went to the finals and he got hit and he looked like he was going to be like a paraplegic for the rest of his life and then like the very next play he went on to have like game of his career or something like that. anyways i think the mlb umpires are the worst becuase all they do is throw people out of the game even if you look at them the wrong way…… i think last season was the worst