Making the Call with Ronnie Nunn (Wade, contact, driving related)

There has been a lot of talk here, and in most message boards about Wade and the calls he gets whether they're justified or not. Other players get brought into the discussion too, like Ginobili and Parker. Are people hating the player when they should be hating the game? While I do think Wade gets a lot of calls, I also believe he takes it in more than most players.

But this thread is specifically about the show on NBAtv called Making the Call with Ronnie Nunn . Ronnie Nunn is the director of officials in the NBA, and every week has a 30 minute show with two other guys and they discuss controversial calls of the week. Sometimes the hosts agree and sometimes they don't. Some calls are simple, like the refs not realizing that the shot clock has expired before the release. Some calls are funny, like when the Spurs didn't have 5 players, and then Nunn would explain how it's always 5 on 5 in the NBA so the last player to foul out doesn't foul out, but gets T'd up every time he fouls past 6. There's the controversial ones like Kobe's suspension.

The biggest one that caught my attention last week was breaking down a play by Derron Williams. It was a fast break and Derron Williams took it full court for a layup, jumped into Barginani of the Raptors and got to the FT line. One host said it was called a blocking foul and that was the correct call because Barginani was inside the circle and jumped and Williams drew contact.

Here's the important stuff:
Ronnie Nunn said that it should have been a NO CALL. He said that the most blown calls in the NBA today are calling a blocking foul when it should be a no call. He said veteran refs make this mistake just as much as rookie officials. Ronnie Nunn said that a defender is allowed to jump straight up, even if he is in the circle. So if the offensive player jumps into the defender, but the defender maintains verticality, then it should be a no call.

Ronnie Nunn said that the problem is most officials, when confronted with a driving contact situation, only look at the offensive player and glance at the defender to see if he is planted outside the circle. They see the air contact and automatically assume that the defender jumped INTO the offensive player. It should only be a foul if the defender jumped FOWARD INTO the offensive player, but just because there's contact in the circle doesn't mean there should be a foul call. (Of course there's still fouls if the defender like leans forward to hit the arm or something)

The point is Ronnie Nunn has stated that the NBA is constantly working on this issue and that it is the thing officials are getting wrong the most in the game today.

This is huge in my opinion. Because Yao always got so many fouls for just jumping straight up or standing still inside the circle and a speedy offensive player would just jump straight into Yao. I've also noticed that for the last couple of weeks, Wade's FT's have gone down. He still gets a lot, but not the insane 14 to 26 FT attempts he was getting before.

This is not hating on Wade, for many players, mostly guards would just jump into defenders in the circle looking to create contact, and get the call. Wade has been the most aggressive at doing so. Hopefully the officials are adjusting more as the season progresses. This should definitely help the Rockets for the foul drawing from driving guards jumping into stationary bodies isn't that big of a deal for our offense, and it protects us more on defense, because our defenders are generally fundamentally sound.

Just want to pass this tidbit along. I'll keep an eye out to see if the refs are actually adjusting to this, for Nunn did say that the problem is in that the refs are inherently bad at seeing the situation...it's not that they're blatantly disregarding the rules.

 

I think this is a big deal in the sense that the issue is so misunderstood amongst fans, game announcers, and the press, and probably even amongst many players and coaches.

The NFL makes mistakes and sends out reports and it gets printed through the AP wires and so forth saying "We the NFL are sorry for being wrong last Sunday".

The NBA does not do that, and the press and fans jump all over the NBA for not being accountable. The problem is, the NBA does admit to officiating mistakes, but they don't do it publicly, not through the press...they do it through their own channels, like NBAtv. The problem is the press doesn't watch NBAtv and that's not a story, it's just shows on the NBA's network.

But it's a big deal to me in the sense that every week, the NBA's director of officials is publicly stating through his show: "we blew this call, we blew that call etc."

I'm just trying to spread the info along to help people understand better. And it's great to hear clarification on the block vs charge vs no call debate.

The problem is now that even though Refs should have more "no calls" instead of "blocking calls", Ronnie Nunn point blank admitted that the Refs are not good at seeing the situation. Basically he's saying, our NBA Refs are good at most things, but this block call vs no call thing, they suck at it, and we're sorry, but we're trying to get better.

It's a tough situation, honestly, for a ref, in my opinion. It's just natural to watch the offensive player, watch the ball, etc....great Refs (I've reffed before) have to fight off all their natural watching tendencies. It's hard to see the offensive player get contact in the air and be sure if the defender jumped straight up, or a little forward, or backward, because the whole time, you're not looking at the defender, you're just looking to see if the offensive player got hit.

So, this is great in the sense that we know what the Rules specify now, and how the NBA thinks it should be called. But it's not so great in the sense that the NBA is admitting that they suck at enforcing this rule correctly.