Critical Officiating article from a local news paper.

[Scrapper1]

I like grunewar's comments. I also keyed on the paragraph he (she?) quoted:

''There is no flow to basketball games anymore,'' one coach said. ''It is whichever team is more physical and can beat up on the other team. Officials are tired of calling fouls, and the game has gotten out of hand. There is no finesse. The officials think they are bigger than the game.''

The anonymous nature of the coaches' comments speaks volumes by itself. Is "cowardly" too strong a word? I don't know, but it seems to fit.

Where does the comment about being bigger than the game come from? How do you go from "the game is getting generally more physical" to "the officials think they're bigger than the game"? That's a coach's attitude, which I think is fairly common for some reason, and not something that is supported by a particular style of play.

Stupid comments from the coaches for the most part.

[Back In The Saddle]

It's one long, unsubstantiated, anonymous, incoherent rant and rave. It just strings together complaints from some number of random coaches. There is little, or mostly no, context for any of the comments. There is no data to back any of it up. There's no objectivity; not even a pretense at being unbiased.

In fact, whenever this writer quotes a source with a positive opinion, it's quickly followed with a statement about how that person "admitted" or "conceded" points the writer is trying to make. The only named sources get set up as straw men for the unnamed sources.

This piece of journalism, IMHO, wouldn't get a passing grade in any journalism 101 class. It's little more than typical sports writer cry-baby ranting.