[Nevadaref]

Good discussion of the Rondo foul this morning on the Mike & Mike show.
Golic says that it definitely should have been called flagrant [he means flagrant 1], Jeff Van Gundy comes on and says no because of when it happened, but that in the 1st or 2nd Q that's flagrant, Dick Vitale says no matter when it's flagrant and the officiating needs to be consistent throughout the game. He agrees with Golic.

Now anyone not named btaylor can stop reading at this point.

Originally Posted by btaylor64

I disagree. To me, if you are reffing intent on this play you are saying "wow he hit him in the face and wasn't making an attempt on the ball!" If you are reffing action then you say, "Was that hit to the head unnecessary and/or excessive".

Nope, you still don't get it. A good official would say, "Wow, he whacked him in the face. It really doesn't matter whether he was going for the ball because he didn't get the ball, he got his face." That's what the action was, and that's what you judge. A good official doesn't care what he was trying or might have been trying to do. He sees what he did and penalizes that.

Originally Posted by btaylor64

This is where you have no clue what you're talking about. Our "league office" is now called the NBA Referee Operations Dept. Which is a seperate entity to David Stern and his league office. For you to say that we don't follow the written rules is a ridiculous statement.
...snip...
1. I don't "believe" anything. I KNOW it! We have standards and we follow them very strongly.

Oh please, don't try to big-time. I'm not impressed.

First, when I wrote "league office" I was referring to the mouthpiece of the NBA: Stu Jackson. His title for the NBA is executive vice president of basketball operations, but he is the one who always makes the comments to the press. In this case he said,
"We felt Rondo was making a basketball play and going for the ball after a blown defensive assignment by the Celtic team."
"In terms of the criteria that we use to evaluate a flagrant foul penalty one, generally we like to consider whether or not there was a windup, an appropriate level of impact and a follow-through. And with this foul, we didn't see a windup, nor did he follow through. So for that reason we're not going to upgrade this foul to a flagrant foul penalty one."

I don't agree with him, and think that he is flat-out ignoring the written criteria in his viewing of the play, but that's just my opinion. I'm certainly not alone either as I just posted above. Talk like his is why I have a hard time agreeing that the NBA follows any soft of rules or standards. They seem to do as they please when they please, and then try to justify it with spin later.

Secondly, the leader of the referee ops dept isn't even a referee. He was a military guy. We've discussed that issue on here before.

Lastly, one of the NBA's four group supervisors for referees lives in my state and from time to time I get to chat with him. I've posted this before on this forum. He is very knowledgeable and frank about how they do things officiating-wise in the NBA. So the info that I get comes from a very-well informed source. I'm sure that he KNOWS more than you.

(BTW you never answered tomegun's questions.)

Originally Posted by btaylor64

Well apparently you don't know what it takes to have the complete package as a referee. its not solely about getting plays right. The "complete" referee is a phenomenal playcaller, great game manager and great communicator.

Apples to oranges. I was not talking in the larger sense. I was merely responding to your statement.
In a situation such as occurred, no one cares about the communication skills or the other stuff. When ESPN is showing the replays all that they are discussing is whether the right call was made.
The media never says that they got that call totally wrong, but that's okay because they did a wonderful job of communicating.
We are solely focusing on accuracy here.

Originally Posted by btaylor64

So you're saying that this was "excessive" contact. So you are dumping him in the pro game then?? Would you have considered it "excessive" had the off. player landed on his feet?

a. Yep, that smack was excessive.
b. Nope, it doesn't equate to ejection, but it's not a common foul either. It warrants something more. In NCAA that's called an intentional personal, in NBA it's called flagrant one.
c. If he managed to land on his feet, yet still had blood coming out of his mouth from the whack, you're darn right I would still deem it excessive.

Originally Posted by btaylor64

Well I'll guarantee you this... you quit talking like you know pro rules and standards and ill quit trying to quote college rules. It's not that I didn't KNOW the rule I just didn't know all of it. I don't mind knowing the college rules and in fact I know most of them. I just learned a little more. Is that wrong?

Terribly wrong. Every time that you take the court for an NCAA game there is the potential for a huge screw up because you have such enormous gaps in your rules knowledge. It's true that most of the time it won't matter because nothing out of the ordinary will come up and you can just call the obvious and be fine. However, you are completely unprepared to handle a difficult and unusual situation when one does arise.
Essentially, you claim to know your ABCs, but acutally don't know the alphabet past C. You can only fool people for so long, eventually it will catch up with you.