Officiating in the NBA

smokes

Huge Member
People joke a lot about how the NBA may have the worst/most corrupt officiating of any major sport. I have to say as someone who watches a lot of football (soccer) I'm used to dire refereeing calls and I understand the difficulty of the job these guys do. At the same time watching this league can be laughable sometimes.

As fellow Knicks fans I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about, but watching completely unrelated games it's evident all the time.

In most recent memory I was watching the OKC vs Denver game a couple of weeks back and the protection they gave Durant/Westbrick was ridiculous. Every possession both teams were driving to the rim and every layup had equal contact. Denver got no foul calls and OKC got 100% of the foul calls and came back to tie it up and take it to OT. Luckily the Nuggets won that game in OT and it was a call in their favour that sealed the game, however on another night OKC could have just blown them out the building in OT and the ridiculous calls down the stretch would have lost them the game.

This week two coaches (Rick Carlisle, Dwayne Casey) have been fined $25,000 by the league for their comments about blown calls late in games.

Considering this league has the technology in place and certain rules in place where plays can be reviewed, it seems silly to have these close games decided by blown calls. I know that the league doesn't want to slow down the pace of the game any further than it already is, with these reviews, free throws, timeouts etc all culminating in 5 minutes of action spread over 30 minutes of TV time.

However I think the limitations on these reviewable calls is ridiculous. They can only check out of bounds plays, clear path fouls and whether a bucket was a 2 or a 3? Really?

I think they should change the way this is done and allow all/most calls to be challenged. Either each coach has a limited amount of challenges they can give, or an incorrect challenge leads to a fine/technical free throw, something like that, to keep it contained but still allow for the game to be called fairly.

As a fan it can really ruin the experience of watching the NBA, seeing these games decided by the officials so frequently.
 

bigapple

Starter
i agree about that game and many other players complain on refs but just look @ Spurs they are so quiet they got the best nba record they just got 10-0 series.
 
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