Interesting take on NBA Officiating....

[jeffpea]

this from Bill Simmons of ESPN: The Worldwide Leader In Sports Page 2 "fame".......

The Sports Guy: Bill Simmons Welcome to the No Benjamins Association - ESPN Page 2


3. Lousy officiating
This has nothing to do with the economy, obviously. But what the hell? Seriously, what the hell? HOW COULD THE REFEREES BE THIS CONSISTENTLY BAD??? THEY ARE KILLING THE PRODUCT! THEY ARE KILLING IT!!!! I CAN'T STOP USING CAPS!!!! How are we enabling such staggering incompetence on a day-to-day basis?



A great example: I knew we were in trouble before Wednesday's Clips-Celts game when I saw Bennett Salvatore, Courtney Kirkland and Leroy Richardson, or as they're more commonly known, "The Three Stooges." I told my wife, "These guys will find a way to decide this game, you watch." She didn't care; she was more interested in devouring the bag of Sour Patch Kids we had just purchased. But sure enough, with the Celts somehow leading by just one (they were awful all night) and only 35 seconds to play, Rajon Rondo missed a free throw that ricocheted to Mardy Collins, only Big Baby Davis somehow swiped the ball away as Richardson's whistle blew. The Boston bench exploded, thinking it was an undeserved foul, only Richardson had blown his whistle for a Clippers timeout. One problem: Collins never had the ball. He fumbled the easy rebound to Davis even as the Clippers were signalling for time. Richardson granted the timeout because he's inept at his job and didn't make sure Collins, you know, actually secured the rebound. Did you know you can call timeouts when you don't have the basketball? Me neither. As a kicker, the Clips scored the winning basket on their free possession.



These screw-ups seem to happen four times a week. The league claims to care and made a big stink about hiring Ronald Johnson this past summer to clean things up. Nope. It's still a mess. Three weeks ago, the Lakers and Celtics played the highest-rated regular-season cable game in 13 seasons. Guess which crew the NBA assigned to that beauty? That's right, Leon Wood, Monty McCutchen and Jim Capers Jr. (only because Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne were unavailable). So TNT's record audience was treated to a comically choppy slopfest in which Boston's best player (Kevin Garnett) fouled out on a touch foul 35 feet from the basket with five minutes to play. The NBA: Where Amazingly Bad Officiating Happens. When will someone take responsibility and admit that something is seriously, drastically, undeniably wrong? Why can't Stern announce in June, "Our best three referees right now are Steve Javie, Mark Wunderlich and Joey Crawford, and we want the best championship series possible, so those guys will be handling every 2009 Finals game because we care about the quality of our sport?" For a league that claimed to take the Donaghy scandal so seriously, we haven't seen any inclination that it did. Not even a hint. Not a whiff. It makes me want to commit a flagrant foul 2 on myself. But I digress.