If the officials aren't competent enough to make a correct call, instead of a makeup call, then they should put the basketball away and flip coins instead.
Correct thesis. I believe it helps the team out in the sense that it motivates them and amps them up to fix their mistakes and/or prevent themselves from even being in that situation in the next game. Maybe this. Maybe that. But I think that if McHale did something like this after Game 1, the series may have turned out differently because the Houston Rockets players would have been motivated to play well for a coach that stood up for them.
It is smart, because it keeps people from talking about their failure and instead focus on the refs. He would know more than anyone if his team is filled with the mentally weak that wouldn't be able to handle a "Mr. Unreliable" type headline.
Fair enough. You might be right that Doc will end up getting better performance from his guys as a result. It might be that the tightness they exhibited at the end of the game was not because of Doc's reaction. It's impossible to prove one way or the other. But, I think it's really ungrounded to say McHale should have done this or that. Who knows if he would have gotten better or worse performance out of his players or if everything would be the same. Also, this has all been posted already in the massive Clippers-Thunder thread, FYI, though I'm not one to go around scolding people for misfiling things.
To be fair, if you read all Doc's comments on ESPN, he acknowledges all the mistakes made down the stretch. I haven't seen a Top-3 NBA player make so many mistakes in such a little time span. CP3 reeeeeeeeeeeally screwed the pooch.
i dont' think it's meant to be taken so literally... the point is, there's more to the game than the final minutes...the great teams, more often than not, try to win before it gets to the point. Look at the Spurs vs the blazers....Spurs against Dallas in game 7.....Rivers needs to worry about what happened the other 47 minutes.
In my opinion Doc said it right when he mentioned the "comedy of errors" that lead to it. yes you don't want the ref and a bad call to define a game or cost you it. But you can't put yourself into that position to begin with. If the Rockets don't squander double digit leads and make stupid mistakes, Lin's mistake in game 4, the bad calls in game 1 and subsequent don't matter. Because you don't let the refs or anything else beat you.
Nook, you are often on the wrong side of issues. This one is no exception. The refs CLEARLY gifted OKC after watching the replay where it's blatantly obvious Jackson knocked the ball out. There's absolutely no excuse for a group of professional NBA refs to make a call like that. The refs should never affect the outcome of games, but seem to do it every game in the NBA. This is why basketball isn't America's sport because of things like this
If enough coaches and players start making noise, it becomes a huge issue that they need to fix. A la the Sterling issue. If players and coaches didn't make it a big deal, it wouldn't have become a big deal. Sterling would probably still own the Clips and merely have gotten a slap on the wrist.
He should have waited till they have lost the series to bring light to this issue. At this point, the coach's job is not to blame the refs for losing the game, but to rally the players to play better the next game. He should have chewed out the players for choking rather than making excuses for them on losing the game. What is more alarming is that he implied that they were about to lose the series because of that call. What kind of message is he sending to his players? "Guys, we are going to lose the series. It's on the refs."
Whatever. There are bad and questionable calls in every sport. Basketball just requires officials to make these kinds of judgment calls on every single play, opening the door for that much more scrutiny on the refs. I think how one feels about this play depends which team you like better, to be honest. And in this instance, once they went to replay, the officials would piss off one team or the other no matter which way they called it. If they call Clipper ball, OKC gets royally screwed on what is a clear foul. Reggie Jackson did not "knock the ball out of bounds", it was smacked out of his hands because of a foul. So calling it Clipper ball in that situation is an even bigger travesty, even if the lawyers among us favor technicalities over getting the call 'correct'. In the end, I like what the officials did here, because they got the call correct in principle, even if it is not following the letter of the law. I agree with the previous poster who suggested that replay be expanded next year to allow the officials to change the call to a foul if that is the reason the ball went out of bounds.
Bad calls is spot on. So many people called it (simmons included) when Salvatore and Tony Brothers were shown to be the reffs. That being said, the Clippers choked it away. Doc Blaming it on the reffs is deflecting from his team's ****ty play.
He didnt deflect it at all, he mentioned how they played bad down the stretch of 3 minutes til the end. My thinking is, if they were melting down so bad, why did the refs need to jump in and start making bad calls which all happened to be in OKCs favor?
Yes they are inconsistent at best. The call on Jackson was arbitrary in the way they went about it but game is over. Im ready to move on to the next game honestly because there is no way people are going to convince me this leagues reffing system doesn't need tweaking.
Regardless Doc ranting or not, he's just defending his team and he just want fairness like everyone else. Yes the refs were terrible and did rob the Clippers. I'm glad that he ranted because this stuff can no longer be ignored. So many games in the playoffs this year alone were decided by the refs. I still can't believe the NBA didn't fire the ref that call the foul on Howard when Freeland was bearhugging him. I think the NBA need to start having a system to improve officiating. Referees making horrible obvious mistakes should be held accountable. Like I said in my other post, if no referees are held accountable for anything and can basically get away with anything, officiating will never improve. The NBA has lost millions of fans over the years because of officiating alone. Many people are starting to believe that the NBA is rigged. In order for the fans to believe in the integrity of the game again, the NBA need to start holding referees accountable. Warnings, Fines, and suspensions need to start taking place. If the NBA would continue to just apologize to teams and not do anything else, then what's the point. Referees will never try to make the right call. Some referees are indeed fair and call it as they see it but half of the refs are biased and have an hidden agenda.
