I was watching the GSW vs DAL last night and I saw some prime examples of why refs piss me off. 1) When the refs seemingly wait to see if a player makes the shot to call a foul. What I saw: Dirk goes up for the dunk, and was slightly bumped by Barnes on the way up (no whistle on the actual bump mind you), Dirk goes up and misses the wide open dunk and as the Al Harrington is securing the rebound the ref blows the whistle and rings Barnes up for the foul. This was a good 2.5 seconds after the initial contact! All I'm saying is if its a foul its a damn foul, SO CALL IT, dont wait until it's over and the team is headed the other way. That's the worst thing a ref can do in my opinon, it's like everybody exhales because they got a defensive stop, then it's a whistle. If I where playing this would discourage me, I would feel like someone is taking something away from me. I would probably lead the league in T's. 2) Refs give a player 2 free throws when he is clearly not attempting to shoot, but merely headed towards the basket. Jerry Stackhouse is driving towards the basket, Baron Davis impedes his progress, the whistle is blown. Stackhouse never even attempted to shoot, and they gave him two shots. NO the Warriors werent in the penalty, everybody in the game just acted like it was cool, I'm thinking what the f*ck?! He wasnt shooting?! So why is he walking to the line?!
There are many instances of wait-and-see fouls called. Basically the refs dont want to blow the whistle at everything that COULD be called a foul. If the player makes those shots, they let it go since it was a light foul and this is the play-offs. Boozer got one or two of those, Yao got one of those(the jumper Jazz fans point to as a ghost foul - probably because it was a wait-n-see). T-Mac got one. Dirk got one or two, Howard got one, Ellis got one. Its a common occurence, and yes its annoying. Its better than not calling the foul.
1 Remember "no harm, no foul"? The refs are just checking to see if they can avoid blowing the whistle. 2 I agree with you. Too often players are given FTs when not in the act of shooting but it's consistently called that way in the NBA.
Not saying I like the refs, but it doesn't annoy me when they do that..I notice it, but..if it goes in, then that's good, if it doesn't, and they call the foul, that's good, too. If it's a hard foul that should be called, then yeah, maybe I'd get a bit upset.
Maybe it'll be a lot easier if there is only One ref per game. That way there'll be less calls because the ref can't see everything.
I've seen fights start in pickup games for fouls called late. Hey, that could be a new rule. If a ref calls a late foul, the player that committed the foul gets a free shot at him...
Refs have to win the game for the Mavs, if Mavs dont make it to the 2nd round, alot of bandwagoners wont support the NBA for the rest of the playoffs. In turn costing the NBA some money. So refs make the Warriors seem like the bad guys, let the Mavs win and everyone is happy. That way people who are rooting for the Warriors will seem like assholes rather than someone rooting for the underdogs.
Clearly there must be a limit to the severity of contact allowed in "no harm, no foul". You can't allow players to dish out punishment to shooters after the ball is released. The point of it is to reduce whistles and unnecessary interruptions in the game, which is a good thing. I get sick and tired of watching some games because they degenerate into fouls being called on every play. Any attempt to limit the number of fouls called because of harmless contact is welcome IMO.
Yes, its liek they say in football, you can call holding on every play. But it only gets called when its obvious OR has a dramatic effect on the play.
