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December 11, 2007
I’ve always felt being an NBA ref is the hardest officiating gig in pro sports, save maybe doing football (soccer) games in South America where you might end up dead if you blow the whistle at the wrong time. I say this because basketball’s the only sport where contact is completely prohibited, but still happens on every play. That being said, I like to give NBA refs a break (when I can stand to) and with the Tim Donaghy incident still relatively fresh it’s probably tougher than ever out there on the hard court. But I, like all Steve Javie-fearing NBA fans, can only stomach so much. I’d like to take a moment to air two grievances regarding the way the games are being called this season, now that we’re deep enough into it that I can be sure what I’m watching isn’t just an anomaly. Here are my two beefs with NBA officials this year. I’m sure now that this is written the necessary adjustments will be swift and precise. Firstly, late whistles. It’s an age-old issue with the parquet zebras. A player draws contact, flips up a shot, it rims out and the whistle is blown as if to say, “I was waiting to see if that was going to drop before I recognized the fact that he just fouled the s**t out of you.” The implication is that if the contact isn’t enough to prevent you from hitting a shot, then there’s no real foul on the play, which is, to put it lightly, completely idiotic. As I said it’s hardly a new problem in the NBA, but I’ve seen more late whistles this season than ever before, and while I don’t have any real statistics to back that up, I feel pretty confident in my assessment. It’s a brutal problem too, because it completely compromises said official’s integrity, or in the case of some, puts them into negative integers. Call me an idealist, but a foul is a foul and it doesn’t take four seconds for one’s brain to send a signal to one’s mouth to make a blowing motion into a whistle. If you’re going to call it, call it right away. Anything late not only makes the official look amateur, unsure and even possibly biased, but it also completely disrupts the pace of the game, assuming there is one to begin with. Which brings me to point number two: travelling. I’m all for enforcing the rules, even when it comes to travelling -- one that’s been called with different levels of commitment at different points in league history -- but something in particular has been added to the interpretation this year, and it’s really starting to piss me off. Here’s the scenario: the ball gets kicked out to a player with an open look at a jump shot. A defender begins to close out recklessly. The player pump fakes and gets the defender in the air. He then pivots, puts the ball on the floor and drives to the basket as the defender flies by. Travelling is called. Now I understand that when this happens it happens because the player with the ball has lifted his pivot foot and planted the other one before beginning to dribble, but this split second of infraction has historically been completely disregarded by officials, and at most levels of basketball I’m pretty sure it still is. Actually, it’s almost impossible to make this move effectively without a little shuffling of the feet, especially for guys who have been doing it that way since they were playing during gym class in the fourth grade. We’re not talking about three steps here. This isn't Jeff Green getting Georgetown into the Elite Eight. What’s more, it’s such an annoying thing to see called. Here you are watching a game, the ball is kicked out and you sit up in your chair excited to see the ensuing flurry of activity as a player enters the open lane with a head of steam. Then boom – it’s blown dead right before all the good stuff. Which begs the question, what facilitated this odd decision to suddenly enforce a rule so stringently when it infringes so significantly on a fundamental aspect of basketball? Not only is it completely ticky-tack, but again, it really slows the freaking game down. So to recap: I respect NBA officials and understand how hard their job is, but they seriously need to keep the whistles where they’re supposed to be: that is to say, on time and away from slashing players that moved the wrong foot 1/16th of a second too soon.
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