View Single Post
  #12 (permalink)  
Old Sun May 20, 2012, 02:56am
Victor74 Victor74 is offline
Official Forum Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 32
I'll try answering further without sounding like I'm an expert that I am not.

Generally speaking, you can forecast Finals officials by two major things. How many regular season games they worked and of those, how many they were crew cheifs in. Second, how many playoff games they officiated. Again generally speaking, all eight crew chiefs will make it into Finals (Joe Crawford, Dan Crawford, Derrick Stafford, Ken Mauer, Monty McCutchen, Scott Foster, Mike Callahan and Greg Willard) unless three things occur: injury, controversies and/or an unprecidented drop in ratings/accuracy.

My take on Tony Brothers, Ron Garretson and Rodney Mott? These are personal opinions only:
Brothers appears to be laid back, sometimes too much so. Perhaps game management is an issue with the brass. Looking at his schedule the last couple years, he isn't always a crew chief. Generally speaking, the higher rated crew chief is a consistent and constant crew chief. Others not so highly rated are paired up with another crew cheif. (Thus with exception to the possible Dick Bavetta farewell tour, you won't see Dan Crawford working with Monty McCutchen in regular season games generally speaking.)
Garretson may have fallen victim to the fact that there are many younger crew, less experienced crew chiefs (McCutchen, Malloy...) that are performing better than him. I also tend to believe (this would be borderline conspiratorial) that Garretson is "old NBA" and the new brass doesn't care for that. Garretson also may have game management that doesn't appeal to the brass.
Mott in my opinion is an average official at best. He may have become a crew chief for no other reason than younger officials worthy of it (John Goble and Eric Lewis for example) weren't yet ready. I suspect that if Mott wasn't a crew chief, he may not have even made playoffs. If I scheduled the playoffs, Mott wouldn't make it into Conference Finals.

Again, these are my personal opinions and I do not want to come across as an expert at all. Take them for their worth, opinions only.
Reply With Quote