NBA Refs get their little feelings hurt

cool, now can players and coaches start complaining about poor officiating without being fined?

 

while i understand your complaints, adam silver certainly didn't give me any talking points before my post. most of what we're talking about has either been going on forever (to a large degree) or is just part of human nature, and are largely things i am fine with.


we can say the last 2 minutes should be reffed the same as the first 46 minutes, but we know that's now how our brains work. emotionally, the last 2 minutes feels much more important and so we all (fans, coaches, players) place more emphasis in our minds on what happens in those 2 minutes. and even statistically, what happens in those 2 minutes swings the odds of a game far more than the first 46 minutes. a made shot in the 1st quarter might change a team's odds of winning the game by 1%. a made shot in the last minute might change their odds by 50%. we feel that emotionally and maybe even rationally. and that changes behavior. making a 50/50 call that everyone feels is deciding the game is much tougher than making a call no one will care about.


people don't like criticism. so unless you greatly incentive them to take , they will avoid it. and while it might be the officials making the calls, the criticism will inevitably make its way to the league. they don't want it either. they might be transparent, but something tells me they don't really care about changing the status quo. and that's what it is, the status quo. because it's always been that way. and when i watch college games, it seems to be exactly the same there. so unless the entire sport is just picking all of the worst refs or just being lazy about grading them, something tells me they all want it that way. and i've never really heard players complain about the "let the players decide the game" philosophy. nor do i suspect most fans would really want (at least deep down in places we don't talk about at parties) to see that chip on the guy cutting across the lane called a foul with 30 seconds to go in a 1 point game.


and while i think it has largely always been this way, i think the increased popularity of the sport, the internet, and social media have made it worse. before, you got yelled at by some players and coaches and fans for about 5 minutes. now you get roasted by the whole world for 48 or 72 hours and then shown replays of it forever. obviously you could say that's what comes with reffing in the nba, but people still aren't going to go out of their way to get that treatment unless incentivized (like getting fired). but unless the league, the teams, and the fans suddenly decide they really want those same ticky-tack calls all 48 minutes, then the league has no incentive to "incentivize" the refs to make those calls.


as far as superstar and superteam calls, i think that's just human nature. if you and i called games, there would probably be those same calls. if lebron james misses a layup and you can't tell if random nba scrub hit him or not, are you going to assume that the scrub made a great play, or that he probably fouled lebron? it's a 50/50 call and you've gotta call something. or if you've gotta quickly decide if draymond green just committed his 6th foul of the game with 5 minutes to go on a 50/50 play, you might just decide he knows how to play defense and got the block. or if you just saw hakeem do the craziest move ever and you're not sure if he took 3 steps.


even non-stars get the benefit of the doubt on things they are good at. from a kevin martin foul drawn (before they changed the rules) to an iguodala slap at the ball, if you are perceived as good at something, you get the benefit of the doubt.


and it extends to teams. the warriors set moving picks, the sonics played all the illegal defense they felt like playing, the knicks could beat up everyone with oakley/mason/ewing/smith and not get called. get everyone to realize you are good at bending the rules, and you get to bend them. if there's one thing about this inconsistent type of reffing, it's that they're very consistent about letting you do it once you "earn" it. i think it's just human nature.


and as much as that might point to getting machines to do it, i'm not sure we'd like it any better. a rigid, scientific calling of the game would probably leave us just as frustrated. but obviously ymmv.

 

Bring in robots but program the robots like they programed Tars in Interstellar....how honest you want them to be ect it will make them more realistic.

 

Like coding, when i run the debugger and found the logic or coding was correct, i correct it right away.

Unlike 20 years ago, these referees have the technology today to watch every angles of instant replay for like more than 5 minutes in certain situation, yet their conclusions were always wrong and the mistakes were made not by one but THREE referees.

I know refereeing is not an easy job but to make silly mistakes while you were allowed to watch instant replay over and over again in different angles and the rest of the worlds know you made the wrong call, i can only come to the conclusion that certain referees are biased against certain players or teams.

 

If my job allowed me to make mistake after mistake after mistake, year after year after year, without any improvement until I retire, I wouldn't mind they listed every single mistake I made.

 

Just implement a review system similar to the Hawk Eye in tennis.

eg.
Each team gets 2 reviews per quarter. 1 review per OT.

If a team gets the review wrong, they lose it and their reviews drop to 1 for the quarter. If they get it right, they keep it and remains at 2 reviews for the quarter. This will stop abusing the power and slowing down the game.

Only the Head Coach can call the review. He can obviously consult with AC's or bench players as required, but it should be his decision. On court players are too close to the action that they cannot see the entire play like an HC can. Not to mention, players get more emotional with dirty play than an HC would on the side lines.

There would need to be a limit to what sort of rules can be enforced by a review. eg. I don't think it's a good idea to allow travelling to be subject to reviews, since there's always a grey area to the third step. If players are too worried about getting reviewed for travelling, you'll see less dunks, hence less entertainment.

This brings me to my last point. This system could create more entertainment and drama in the NBA. Tennis has done a great job of the review system in making it a strong part of the game. Dramatic and entertaining. I would say the same for the review system in Cricket.

 

Just one more thing. Like other sports with a video referee, the outcome of a review must depend on a video referee. There's no point in having the same on court refs look at their own calls and make a ruling. While they will overturn the more glaringly obvious wrong calls, there is still incentive for them to not overturn for the sake of their image.