Stern wants to address homerism on local broadcasts?

I hope you don't listen for Tommy Points on C's 'casts! Tommy is, at least, an acknowledged jerk.

 

Bill Simmons has made quite a few comments predicting and then mocking the amount of calls the Lakers got recently on Twitter. And he's on the national broadcasts.

 

how about addressing flopping more seriously first. homer announcers can be funny if can stand them. i was lol'ing at the denver announcers. stil remember a quote "yup there's that stick your arms out, get to the free throw line, james harden" lmao

and tommy heinsohn is the best, on kevin martin "i tell ya if you breathe on this guy his bones start to rattle" hahaha

 

So Stern wants to censor the media too? Next thing you know, he's working on nulling the First Amendment.

 

I don't particularly like Worrell as a commentator, but he's a tradition more than anything.

But he never gets into the the absurdly annoying homer area where we never commit fouls, and every time our guys get looked at, it's a foul, that's the terribles of the league.

 

Simmons is not a color commentator for a local broadcaster. Stern can't tell ESPN what it's employees can or cannot say.

 

Sean Elliot

 

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I didn't think broadcast homerism was a problem, but I can see the business angle here. You want to be able to use team announcers for national broadcasts, and the homerism can be annoying and look unprofessional to fans of the opposing team or disinterested viewers. And, yes, the complaining about refereeing makes the league look bad as well.

I think it's probably unwise to take it too far though -- you break the bond with fans if you commoditize the product too much. Maybe you're more likely to mute the TV and listen to the radio play-by-play. Maybe commentary goes outside official channels altogether and you lose all control over content. Or, maybe people stick with dry NBA commentary but their identification with their team is weakened and they are marginally less likely to watch, marginally less willing to pay, and so on.

 

I award you -1000 tommy points for that comment.

 

the NBA is a dictatorship

 

My favorite is the ubiquitous out-of-bounds/foul. The usual scenario: Team A has possession and makes a play to the basket where the player in possession is fouled by Team B. No foul is called on Team B, but the ball goes out of bounds clearly off of Team A. Ref says out of bounds off Team B, Team A retains possession.

As I said, this is a daily constant in NBA games and likely occurs many times per game. It is the quintessential "make up call" and usually allows the refs to avoid calling a foul against a star, but without stealing the ball from the opposing team.

Why it's becoming more obvious and clearly showing that refs are rigging the game is the institution of certain applied instances of instant replay review. Now refs are, at times, forced to review the possession call. In the majority of cases outlined above, they are reversing the possession call, which they are allowed to do, without addressing the uncalled foul, which cannot be reviewed per the rules.

As a result, multi-angle instant replays, both on television and on the jumbo-tron stadium television, expose the bad out of bounds call, and its reversal, as well as the blatantly obvious uncalled foul commited by fill-in-the-blank star or favored team.

TL,DR: Bad refs being exposed by the leagues own implementation of instant replay.

 

I heard a while back (6-7 years) that the MLB did not allow home teams to show bad officiating calls on the jumbotron. I wonder if he also wants local broadcasts to not show when the refs make a mistake.

 

I know who Simmons is and what he does. That's why I brought him up in the first place and mentioned national broadcasts.

To spell out my point, he's on national broadcasts which is even worse if Stern is worried about calling out refs. And Simmons does it insultingly.

 

That's cold.