I went with my daughter to an NBA game tonight. It's only the second or third NBA game I've ever gone to. The game wasn't great, but the officiating was very impressive. In stark contrast to many of the stereotypes that persist about the way the NBA game is officiated I noticed the following:
- Several traveling calls
- A few three seconds calls, one of which was a defensive one
- A couple of real jump balls
- Several offensive fouls called most of which were not run-overs
- A 20 second time-out to tie a shoe
- A couple of technicals, obviously for things players said
- A palming call
- On a foul in the last two minutes, the officials conferred and determined that it was an away-from-the-ball foul
- A delay of game warning for not tossing the ball to the nearest official
- They called the game much more tightly than I normally call mens games. Maybe I need to reevaluate my game.
- An official working sans lanyard changed his mind on a foul call while putting the whistle into his mouth. He had his arm/fist in the air, but in the time it took to get the whistle into his mouth, the fouled player came away with the advantage and the official quickly pulled his arm back down. A good no-call IMHO
- With NBA reporting mechanics, it's sometimes difficult to tell who called the foul. Their signals are very demonstrative. And they appear to sometimes communicate more information that we do in HS. Case in point, after the second T, the official had to signal what happened to the table several times (perhaps the scorekeeper was on his third beer by then?). Each time he made the T signal, followed by the players number, and then there was a second number that I couldn't figure out. It wasn't the number of shots. Dunno.
I was very impressed with their performance, I'm not saying that I'm qualified to be their judge, just that I was impressed.
I have a couple of questions I'm sure somebody will know the answer to. 1) How does the switching work in NBA mechanics? 2) What are the hash marks on the floor around 28' for?
[Edited by Back In The Saddle on Apr 6th, 2005 at 04:36 AM]