Joey Crawford

Some posters jumped all over Dick Bavetta the other day, but here's another lulu by another ref.

Joey Crawford LOVES frustrating the home crowd, ANY home crowd (Lord knows we've seen this more than once on the parquet), but this is ridiculous.

As you can see from the video, Crawford calls this a blocking foul. His demonstration of why is worthy of a high-stepping college band drum major. This call came with 1:15 left in the 4th and the score tied, so it was a BIG call. Chris Duhon came up on his toes, but didn't shuffle his feet. Should this have been a blocking foul, or a ridiculously obvious charge?






bob


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Bob

It's Joey

Looks like a charge to me...... but I will say this, look at the left foot of Duhon just before contact. He shifts it over to the right a couple inches to get squared up a bit better perhaps, didn't really need to and shoudl not change the call. But the arguement could then be made he was not SET.

Oh well as we all know last minute poor calls certainly do affect games and playing to try to make it so a poor call doesn't affect the outcome just does not always work. Sometimes you just struggle the entire game to keep it close and hope to have a shot in the end..............


He has a good angle to make the call but appeared to be more interested in showboating it ..................then getting it right.

beat

I disagreed with the call and still do.
It was a close call and sometimes calls go against you.
The Lakers cannot and will not complain about any calls last night.
They played such an ugly, pathetic game, and should not even have been in that game near the end. I can't think of a game (in any season) in which they shot so poorly and mis-handled the ball so often. Last nights game was one of the ugliest games that I have ever seen and the final box score is remarkable:

1) The 7 Lakers players not named Kobe and Dwight shot 5 for 38 from the field in 162 minutes. They also had 7 turnovers and 18 fouls.
2) Dwight, who was one of their two bright spots, shot 3-12 from the FT line.
3) Kobe, who was sick, and almost willed them to victory, had a Triple Trouble. (40/10 and 10 turnovers). I read that term Triple Trouble (instead of Triple Double) last night on Twitter and thought it was a great term that should be used in the future.

Crawford made one horrible decision last night.
Kobe lost the ball near the sideline and said something to Crawford. In the middle of a 3 on 1 fast break, Crawford blew his whistle and called Kobe for a T. It would have been an easy dunk for Indiana. Indiana made the FT but did not score on the posession. Indiana lost two points due to Crawford.

It really is remarkable how Crawford seems to make 75 to 80% of the calls when he referees. He dominates the referees like no one else can. I wonder if there is a way of finding out what percentages of calls are made by each referee.

TJ

check this site out.....looks interesting, haven;t really checked it yet, perhaps not quite what you wanted

http://www.nbastuffer.com/referee_stats

beat

Beat,
Thanks for the link. It is interesting. Unfortunately, the info there is mostly academic.
The beef that the vast majority of fans have with refs is about how accurate the refs are, their bias toward this or that team/player. So, it'd be great to see some stats from that point of view, e.g. what % of apparently blown calls this or that ref has.
Also, it'd be nice to have more transparency from NBA about refs. Say, ref X made a mistake that possible decided the outcome of the game - how the league dealt with him.
Ooops, sorry - I fell asleep. At least it was a good dream...

AK

The YouTube video BobH posted has been taken down, so for anyone who wants to see Joey C. in all his high-stepping glory, here's a link to an animated GIF that shows it.

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1802317/joey-crawford-boss.gif

I didn't embed it in this post because I didn't want to ruin anyone's day with an infinite loop of Joey Crawford. Anyone who wants to see it can click the link; other innocent bystanders are spared.

By the way, notice that two Pacers start heading back on defense because they thought the call was going to be a charge.

I watched a good portion of this particular game, and I agree with TJ on several points -- it was one of the most dreadful games I've seen, the Lakers had no business winning (nor did the Pacers, for that matter; they stunk, too), and Joey C. totally hosed the Pacers earlier by calling a technical on Kobe when the Pacers were out on a 4-on-1 break.

Almost every discussion we have on refereeing is pointless because everyone has their own opinions, no one changes anyone's mind, and it just gets contentious. But one thing I think most people can agree on is that Joey Crawford is the most polarizing, domineering, attention-grabbing referee in the league.