Love these dudes. Called it fair. The fact I couldnt name them when they stepped on the court means they're good.
Even the end was by the rules, and had that been us I would have expected the same. 0.5 was not enough for a shot though.
That was some extremely physical defense (by us) that the referees allowed. This might be the NBA's answer to the Durant-Warriors merger, which Silver has said was not ideal from the standpoint of keeping the league competitive. And not just for this year. We could be headed back to officiating that looks more like the '80s or '90s.
I have a question about that. Who decides which refs move on to the next round? In the first round the announcing crew said this every game 1, that the refs like the teams would be moving on based on performance...but who is judging? No one like Brothers. Go to any teams forum after he refs a game and its easy to see he's the most hated ref in the NBA easily and most people think he's crooked. I'm just shocked that he continues to officiate these big games, my guess is they move on by peer voting and that means seniority wins out.
The refs were weirdly consistent in how they reffed the game in that they gave the calls to the team with momentum (and it wasnt because of the calls that they got momentum) so in the first the Warriors got a ton of calls to their benefit and that started to change in the second when the rockets made some plays to get back into it. Then in the third when the Warriors when on their steph barrage it was the same thing. In the fourth the Rockets got the nod. I still dislike this a lot but at the very least its something that players can adopt to and I would prefer that then over what the team had in game 3 (which was their own fault but early on when it was still close there was really bad consistency in what was being called or not called)
A couple questionable soft fouls called on us and that last call with 0.5 was pretty ridiculous, but overall solidly officiated game.
Liked how the game was called. Durant and Curry had a questionable and one call apiece (both against Harden), but I think their letting us play helped us seize momentum in the 2nd quarter. I still feel like Curry gets the benefit of soft foul calls more than anyone in the league. His getting tossed around like Raggedy Ann is more a result of his physical makeup than fouls against him.
Curry got the benefit of some soft fouls. One against Eric Gordon early and one against Harden late. That late call to extend the game was stupid, too. They did allow more physical defense at other times. Oddly officiated game.
I said in another thread, and it's been said many, many times before....just be consistent. I feel like consistency is the biggest thing no matter what. If you're going to call ticky tack hand checks, call them every time on every one. If you're not going to call hand checks, don't call them on anyone, ever. I didn't feel like last night was totally consistent but I also didn't feel the pull of the refs like a lot of games have. Then again, you have Draymond basically daring the league to call a flagrant foul and they won't. You have Curry falling over about every third play trying to game a call out of the refs. Leaving a play to holler at the ref with no repercussion. Kerr will act like hand-checking equals a triple homicide where the weapon used was an un-sharpened pencil.
I thought officiating was bad. KD got 3 free throws on a 3 pt attempt and Harden on the very next play was fouled the exact same way and didn't get the call. He had 2 other exact same fouls they didn't call. Curry also got several and 1s on barely any contact on drives to the basket meanwhile Harden and Gordon got a lot more contact on drives and no calls. There was also that fast break in the 4th qtr where I think it was curry clearly grabbed Gerald green preventing him from getting the ball for an easy layup and they called it out on Houston. Officiating was bad.
