OT-Article on Questionable Calls in NBA
 

Questionable calls have marred NBA Finals with Lakers, Celtics - Jack McCallum - SI.com

This guy obviously knows what he is talking about :rolleyes: It's a good read if you're looking to laugh.

Take this to the bank....

In any NBA final game:
1) the losing team and their local papers & fans will say that they lost because of the officials.
2) the winning team and their local papers and fans will say they won in spite of the officials.

The obvious solution is to play the damn game without officials and run a freaking poll every time something questionable happens. Or maybe let the players call their own fouls and violations.

No stoopid blue text intended either.

I like the 'call your own' concept. The question then becomes does the offense or defense call it? I played at parks/gyms where it was the offense and some were defense. I think OFFENSE would be could for the NBA, that way the players could still whine, and we would know who the 'soft' players really are!

I've been a proponent of getting rid of "fouling out" at all levels for years. There is an inherent randomness in foul calls that sometimes causes a guy who's only going to foul 3-4 times in a game to get 2 of those very early - at which point they sit, and this alters the strategy of that team to a degree FAR out of whack from the severity of a single foul. It's too big a penalty. A 2nd foul on your star in the first quarter is FAR more damaging than a 5th foul late in the 4th. That shouldn't be.

Instead - any foul over the limit (whatever that is at your level) is penalized as follows: Non-shooting, it's 1 FT and the ball. Shooting, 2 and the ball. Shooting a 3, 3 and the ball. This penalizes a team for letting a player over-foul, but doesn't completely change the complexion of a game when a player gets 2 in the 1st or 3 in the first half.

What I find great is that through three games in the series so far, with three separate crews, every game has had a large amount of fouls. You would figure the players and coaches would adjust. But as is always the case, it's just easier to blame the officials. :rolleyes:

As to the article, the writer has no idea what he's talking about. Since we have too many fouls being called, let's just make all block charge calls a no-call since as he put, "they're impossible to get right away." Except a competent official has no trouble with calling this...simple thing called refereeing the defense.

Reducing off ball grabbing? The complaint about the majority of the calls has been that it's been off-ball away from the action. Yet the author is suggesting to call more of these. If the author watched any of the games this series, he'd see that a lot of the calls that Celtics have receieved have been freedom of movement calls on defenders trying to hold and impede Ray Allen.

Other points brought up was allowing "slow-footed centers" to bang into the screener on pick and rolls. Basically let's allow our centers to run into screeners with no worries about fouls. That hasn't even been an issue in the Finals. As far as having players no foul out, I don't think we'll ever see this. And quite frankly, I don't see the need for eliminating the rule. Players should adjust to how the game is being called.

I am definitely in the wrong profession if that guy got paid to write that article. Great piece of journalism!

Yeperdoodle....
 

I've seen quite a good amount of NBA referee bashing by all the "talking heads" on many sports stations (ESPN, MASN, etc.) since the series began......you know, the usual. :(

I'm an official as well... and even I will admit these last 3 games were messy at best. It's pretty embarrassing when you make 3 OOB call in the last 2 minutes - and all 3 get reviewed ... and you missed all 3. But worse (to me) have been the phantom calls. I have no rooting interest in this series. But Ray Allen's "foul" in game 1 where he didn't even make contact with the offensive player was awful. Both of Kobe's early on were extremely iffy.

While 95% of what the article said was either nonsense or tongue in cheek (and if so, it was not clearly done that way), I do agree with getting rid of fouling out for the reasons stated above.

We've had summer leagues that got rid of fouling out, and the results are predictable. Now, perhaps that would be mitigated a bit by adding to the penalties, but I'm not sure. Example. Player has reached his limit and is about to foul a shooter. Suddenly there's no incentive for him not to just grab the shooter and prevent him from shooting.

I'm working an established summer league right now that has done it this way for years. No FTs except the last minute of the 2nd half too. A foul in the act is an automatic 2. If ths shot goes in, automatic 3 pts.

It's my first year doing this league, so it's different, but we have a running clock and the players know the drill, so there's no arguing and the play is up and down.

We, as officials, can sit a player down at our discretion if the we have a player consistently fouling. Haven't had one of those yet.

I really like it.

To be fair, on the 3rd review, after getting together and before going to the monitor, they DID award the ball to Boston. Replay did verify the call though I'm sure they were not happy that they missed the loose ball foul that lead to the ball going out of bounds. The other two replays were close and the first replay was near impossible to see in real time. And I don't see anything embarrassing about that.

Right, it works well in summer ball; when they can give us the discretion to sit a player (we have that in the leagues that do it here.) One league that used to do it now keeps track because the games got too rough.
That league doesn't shoot FTs until the 4th quarter. Before that, shooting fouls are one point and the ball. Fouls on a made basket are one point.

Perhaps the player shouldn't foul?

Your point?

Of course they "shouldn't" foul. There's a penalty when they do. I would just rather see teams be able to play their game, see players play the way they normally play. I think it takes away from the game and penalizes a team FAR more than the weight of the transgression when a called foul happens to be an individual's 2nd early foul.

And I would rather see the players adjust and stop fouling.