[Rocky Mountain News]NBA's official stance is a bad call

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Krieger: NBA's official stance is a bad call
May 4, 2005

Brace yourself. Today's subject is NBA officiating.

On the bright side, I am one of the fortunate ones. David Stern cannot fine me. I don't live in China and I don't work for the NBA, which is to say I am not subject to an authoritarian regime that punishes dissent.


Discussing NBA officiating does not necessarily mean blaming it for one team's fortunes or another's misfortunes, although it does, in fact, very often produce them.

This is the dirty little secret Stern doesn't want you to know, but no one in the game with a brain would dispute it: Referees determine the outcomes of games all the time, very often mistakenly.

Stern just slapped Houston Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy with a $100,000 fine for, essentially, suggesting the league office targeted his team. Van Gundy alleged the league instructed its officials to call more fouls on his center, Yao Ming, at the behest of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

At first blush, it does sound like a conspiracy theory from an alibi artist. But when you listen to what Van Gundy actually said - based, he said, on information from an anonymous official - it sounds perfectly plausible, which might be what infuriated Stern.

The league's supervisor of officials, Ronnie Nunn, does offer online instruction to referees in the form of game-by-game reviews, as Van Gundy said.

Teams do submit complaints about officiating, often accompanied by video evidence to support their case, as Van Gundy said Dallas had. In fact, given Cuban's well-known proclivity for criticizing officiating, this part of Van Gundy's tale seems very likely true.

So the only question is whether Nunn did, in fact, find merit in Cuban's case and pass it on to officials working the Houston-Dallas series. I have no evidence one way or the other, but it's certainly conceivable that he called the attention of his officials to illegal screens, after having them called to his attention by Cuban.

So why the sledgehammer from Stern? Because the NBA, otherwise as enlightened as any pro sports organization, runs its officiating apparatus in the spirit of the Soviet Union. The people in charge change, but the one thing they share is an abiding disdain and intolerance for criticism.

Former supervisor of officials Darell Garretson was perhaps the league's most imperious know-it-all, but league vice president Stu Jackson, Nunn's boss, is gaining on him.

The fact remains that NBA officiating is wildly inconsistent from night to night, completely subjective on the part of the individual referees, often incompetent and always unpredictable to the players and coaches who must anticipate its effects.

Game 3 of the Nuggets-Spurs series, for example, featured 48 personal fouls and 58 free throws. Game 4 featured 73 fouls and 91 free throws. Same coaches, same players, different referees.

I offer three recent examples from Nuggets games, all of which cost the Nuggets, but their purpose is not to suggest the Nuggets are injured by bad officiating more than any other team. Their purpose is to show that officials make the same mistakes over and over based on fundamental flaws in their approach.

• Exhibit A: Kenyon Martin is called for a technical foul and ejected from a game against Golden State for shoving the Warriors' Adonal Foyle. The call is made from behind the play by official Rodney Mott, who sees Martin's arm flail out in front of him, sees Foyle go down, assumes cause and effect. Replays from in front of the play show Martin was trying to keep his balance and the contact was incidental.

• Exhibit B: Andre Miller is called for an offensive foul down the stretch of Game 3 against the Spurs. The call is made from behind the play by official Danny Crawford, who sees Miller make contact with Beno Udrih, sees Udrih go down, assumes cause and effect. Replays from the side show Miller pulled up, barely brushing Udrih, who flopped to the floor to produce exactly the mistaken conclusion Crawford drew.

• Exhibit C: Earl Boykins is credited with a two-point basket down the stretch of Game 4 against the Spurs. Official Dick Bavetta, closest to him, signals a three-pointer. Official Bennie Adams, more than 20 feet away on the baseline, overrules him, calling it a two. Replays suggest it was a three, although it is very close. Regulation ends in a tie.

In all three cases, officials make calls from horrendous angles and distances, asserting certainties they are incapable of knowing.

An official in another sport, a friend of mine, has a favorite expression he repeats to himself during the course of a game when he is tempted to make a long-distance call.

"Fish in your own pond," he tells himself.

I'm just guessing this is not among the NBA's daily online instructions.

Neither Stern nor Jackson will ever admit this, but here it is: NBA officiating continues to drive players, coaches, general managers and owners completely nuts because it is capricious, erratic and often wrong, yet also unreviewable and totalitarian in effect.

The league's priority should be improving it. Instead, its priority is punishing its critics in the tradition of tin horn dictators everywhere.



kriegerd@RockyMountainNews.com

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