From one of our local pundits

[Andy]

Originally Posted by bainsey

Stupid? I don't think so. Heavily flawed? Absolutely. And, the foundation lies in this myopic myth from the article...



Here's are two realities of basketball I've come to learn:
*A game is never decided by one play. It is always decided by the totality of the 32/40/48 minutes (plus overtime, if applicable). If one play decided a game, you wouldn't need the other minutes.

*Every single time there's a one-point game, without exception, it's inevitable that the officials have done something -- via action or inaction -- to affect the outcome. Way too much goes on within the game's time span not to be the case.

So, why do we buy into this myth? It really comes down to human memory capacity. We can only remember so much, and we just can't take in all 60-100 possessions. Therefore, when a controversial call happens in a game's closing minutes, it's still typically fresh in people's minds. However, if a call is kicked in the first half, people get mad for 5-10 seconds, but just move onto the next play.

In truth, the smaller the score's margin, the greater chance an official's rulings -- be they in the beginning, middle, or end of a game -- will affect that game's outcome. While those look at Notre Dame/Xavier, I guarantee you that there were rulings in other close games that affected that game just as much.

I could also argue that a missed three-point shot with 7 minutes left in the first half doesn't have as much affect on the fnal score than a missed three-point shot with 1 second left in the game with a team down by two points.....

Why is it always about the referees and what they do or don't do over this course of the game and not the players?!?!?

What fans fail to realize is that we as officials are not making stuff up, we are responding to the players actions to offciate the game.