Let's settle this once and for (c)all!!

OK. Last night's OKC v. SAS game put me over the top and I can't sit here idly without a full scale addressing by all our knowledgeable participants on this site about this topic...Calls/No Calls at the end of the game.

First of all, one phrase needs to be permanently removed from our lexicon. It's something we say or think but it is nowhere near the truth because it's impossible.

"Referees should not determine the outcome of the/a game." Or some corollary thereof.

Like it or not, referees determine the outcome, now get this, of EVERY GAME! That is their job. Otherwise we wouldn't use them or need them. Without them, each game would be a free-for-all of anarchy. If you owned a business and you hired an employee that did his job up until the last 5 minutes of everyday, then he/she just let anything go in that last time period, how long would longer would you employee that person? Keep in mind, this employee could completely take his/her eye off the ball, download porn, kill someone, whatever, but he/she wouldn't be doing what you hired them for that time limit each day. Again, how much longer would you use that person's services?

The NBA has now backed itself into a corner with this examining the last 2 minutes of the game and having public oversight to judge referees on their performance. Quite possibly the DUMBEST move ever. Even if they are just expressing their opinion on missed calls, etc., pretty soon the coaches and players are going to start regularly protesting games as a result. Last night's missed call where Ginobli was forearmed by the dude inbounding the ball may be the legitimate start of the protesting. If not, it will certainly start making the NBAPA thinking about it.

The ref's did miss the call, but they miss a lot of calls EVERY game. By missing that call and the sequences after the inbound pass, they determined the outcome of the game, like it or not. No-calling determines outcomes just as much as calling. There are only 3 sets of eyes on 10 players all the time. You can't see everything. You can't pick out the last two minutes of the game because EVERY previous call effects what happens next.

The referee's need to be protected from this or at the very least it is none of our business. Think of referees as judges. Do we get all bent out of shape when the Supreme Court makes a ruling we don't agree with? You may but you certainly don't review the decision and take it back up there to them yourself and say you ruled incorrectly on this and you need to change it! You pay your taxes and have a voice but the SC ruling is final. Deal with it.

So should the referee's calls be final, even if they miss them. The referee association can and does have its own monitoring processes for its employees. If they make too many wrong or bad calls or misses, they are disciplined or are fired I would imagine.

You will never get a referee to admit on record they swallow their whistles in the last 2 minutes of any game. It would tarnish their integrity and ruin the game. And whether they do or not doesn't matter. It's a stupid question because they determine the outcome of every game every night by their presence. They are hired to do their job for 48 game minutes a night. Not 46.

db

That situation last night was a series of mistakes, missed calls and ridiculous play on both sides of the court.
Sure, Waiters pushed off, there is no doubt about that. BUT if you watched the play, Ginobli did step on the line while defending and preventing the player from throwing the ball in. Then, there very well could have been a five second call on Waiters.  Did Durant fall on his own? And what the heck happpened under the basket.

So, this was not just one mistake , but a series of plays. What is amusing to me is that the game in San Antonio.  So we cannot accuse the ref's of being influenced by the home town crowd.  They just let the boys play.  Wrong, you bet it was wrong, but it all could have been avoided by one of the first calls being made.

I am in agreement about all these plays being looked at constantly. It seems that some referee's do not trust their own judgement anymore or do not have the arogance of Joe Crawford or Dic Bavetta who made a call and that was it.  Like it or not.  Welcome to the new NBA.  I still feel there alot of unprepared ref's out on that court. Some do not know the difference between good defense and a real foul.

I am no good at computer stuff, but if you go to the Sports Geeks/final seconds of OKC/Spurs game web page, they give the run down of all the mistakes that were made in those final seconds

Rosalie Troy

Couple thoughts

First on a sideline inbounds there is just not enough room for the offensive player to stand "back" a reasonable amount of space. According to NYS High school rules the defender may step up to the line a wave his arms and jump ect but may NOT break the plain of the out of bounds line. Seems in the NBA many times the ref will motion the defender to stand back a bit and give a little extra space.

To those old enough to remember a time a ref didn't swallow a whistle. Game 6 in the 1976 playoff series with Buffalo..........

http://www.timwendel.com/buffalo__home_of_the_braves_65990.htm

here is a quote from McAdoo who was called for fouling Jo Jo White as time had about expired.....


“I thought it was a bogus foul. I still do,” McAdoo said. “You cannot call a foul like that so late in the game. You can’t have the entire thing decided by something that iffy. You have to let the players decide it on the floor.”

beat

PS I was at that game and assumed it was going to overtime and was as shocked as anyone when I realized a foul had been called.

Back in the earlier years of the NBA we didn't have to deal with INSTANT REPLAYS. We lived for years with the call being made on the floor and and of course there were many times we questioned the calls. But at least we, like the officials, had to base our opinion based on real time viewing. The slow motion instant replay has only served to create a side show of controversy. Do away with it,with the exception of shot clock issues. Throughout my many years of viewing sports, perceived bad calls have been a way of live and in general were considered as issues that even out over a given period of time, The game is played in real time. So lets take the magnifying glass out of the game and officiate it in real time.

swish

beat wrote:Couple thoughts

First on a sideline inbounds there is just not enough room for the offensive player to stand "back" a reasonable amount of space. According to NYS High school rules the defender may step up to the line a wave his arms and jump ect but may NOT break the plain of the out of bounds line. Seems in the NBA many times the ref will motion the defender to stand back a bit and give a little extra space.

To those old enough to remember a time a ref didn't swallow a whistle. Game 6 in the 1976 playoff series with Buffalo..........

http://www.timwendel.com/buffalo__home_of_the_braves_65990.htm

here is a quote from McAdoo who was called for fouling Jo Jo White as time had about expired.....


“I thought it was a bogus foul. I still do,” McAdoo said. “You cannot call a foul like that so late in the game. You can’t have the entire thing decided by something that iffy. You have to let the players decide it on the floor.”

beat

PS I was at that game and assumed it was going to overtime and was as shocked as anyone when I realized a foul had been called.

beat

Regarding your comment on the space needed to inbound the ball - I thought that it was real tight quarters for the passer and I wondered, after I watched the review, if the Ref took that into consideration and elected not to call a foul

swish

Rosalie makes a good point. The NBA is now producing a generation of cats in a room full of rocking chairs who second guess their calls. Way to go Silver! Let's completely remove any signs of momentum from the game!

db

As for McAdoo, just don't foul late in the game and you won't have a problem. It is unfathomable to imagine players wanting refs to swallow their whistles at any time. It works both ways.

db

Does anyone else remember being taught you had to give the inbounder 3' to throw the ball in? That was back before Johnny Most invented instant replay on the radio. As much as they try to make the NBA a pc sport wyrrd stuff like those last few seconds will always happen and will always give fans the fodder they need to joyously post their peeves. Old School basketball sez never take the ball out of the hands of the players at the end of the game. Let them play, no blood, no harm, no foul. Bird would have one less ring if he hadn't encouraged and participated in that, uh, mugging, way back when. This in no ways excuses the increasingly incompetent refs who call games for the NBA. Howizit that the ref pool is even more watered down then the player pool?

The refereeing topic is the most futile -- everyone has an opinion, and no one is going to change anyone else's mind. Doesn't stop anyone from chiming in, though, so here's my take on it.

Basketball is the toughest sport to officiate -- charge/block, traveling, rule of verticality, incidental contact or a foul, was a shot blocked on the downward arc, was the ball over the cylinder, who touched it last, on and on, all while the largest, quickest, strongest athletes in the world are moving at top speed and when your angle can completely change your take on a call or non-call. Refs have to make hundreds of call/no call decisions each game. As a coach, I told my players that if they wanted the toughest job on the court, be a ref.

Just looking at the end of that Spurs-OKC game, there's tons of room for disagreement about what should or should not have been called. For example, when Waiters was inbounding the ball, besides the forearm shove by Waiters, Manu stepped on the line and otherwise encroached on Waiters' space (NBA rules say that the defender cannot break the plane of the sideline). Watching the replay in slow motion, I'm also convinced that Manu flopped to exaggerate the contact because there was a split-second delay between the contact from Waiters and Manu lurching backward and flailing his arms. So just on that one play, it's possible for different people to come up with vastly different opinions about what should or should not have been called.

People who focus on one individual play that they think was called wrong tend to disregard all the other calls or non-calls that favored their team throughout a game. For example, most people focus on Waiters shoving Manu and argue that the Spurs were robbed, but the "last two minutes" report for the OKC-Spurs game identified eight mistakes by the refs, six of which benefitted the Spurs, so the reffing actually favored San Antonio's down the stretch, but that doesn't matter to those people hyper-focusing on one play (actually one aspect of one play).

Nothing is going to change the mind of someone who thinks the refs stink and are out to get their team, but that's just not how it is. NBA refs are the best around at doing a very difficult job. Calls can be crucial, but in the vast majority of cases, the outcome of games is determined by how the players play, not how the refs ref.

mulcogiseng wrote:Does anyone else remember being taught you had to give the inbounder 3' to throw the ball in?

That's a rule at lower levels of the sport, but I read up on this specific question today, and everything I read indicates that the three-foot rule on inbounds plays isn't in the NBA rulebook. What the NBA has is a rule that says the defender can't break the plane of the sideline or endline where the ball is being inbounded, and there's a further rule that makes breaking that plane a technical foul during the last two minutes of the game or in overtime:

EXCEPTION (5): In the last two minutes of the fourth period and/or any over-time period, a technical foul will be assessed if the defender crosses or breaks the plane of the boundary line prior to the ball being released on a throw-in.

http://www.nba.com/analysis/rules_12.html?nav=ArticleList

There is no way San Antonio got robbed, I don't care what the guys on television were saying. There were so many transgressions that took place in that one possession that it was crazy.

swish wrote:Back in the earlier years of the NBA we didn't have to deal with INSTANT REPLAYS. We lived for years with the call being made on the floor and and of course  there were many times we questioned the calls. But at least we, like the officials,  had to base our opinion based on real time viewing. The slow motion instant replay has only served to create a side show of controversy. Do away with it,with the exception of shot clock issues. Throughout my many years of viewing sports,  perceived bad calls have been a way of live and in general were considered as issues that even out over a given period of time,  The game is played in real time. So lets take the magnifying glass out of the game and officiate it in real time.

  swish

swish,

Back in the old days, there weren't a dozen cameras documenting everything.  Back in the old days there was no video replay capabilities like we have today.  And, last but not least, back in the old days there were only 2 refs and not 3.  You assumed things were going to be missed, you assumed guys were going to get away with mugging each other a bit more.  People talk about the more physical game they played back then, vs the more athletic game we have today.  Well, in part, that was because there was one fewer shepherd and just as many wolves.

Maybe, if the refs were doing a better job, especially since there are more of them, all this would be moot. I don't see this post-mortem review by the league being a problem if the refs did a better job in the first place.


bob


.

bobheckler wrote:

swish wrote:Back in the earlier years of the NBA we didn't have to deal with INSTANT REPLAYS. We lived for years with the call being made on the floor and and of course  there were many times we questioned the calls. But at least we, like the officials,  had to base our opinion based on real time viewing. The slow motion instant replay has only served to create a side show of controversy. Do away with it,with the exception of shot clock issues. Throughout my many years of viewing sports,  perceived bad calls have been a way of live and in general were considered as issues that even out over a given period of time,  The game is played in real time. So lets take the magnifying glass out of the game and officiate it in real time.

  swish

swish,

Back in the old days, there weren't a dozen cameras documenting everything.  Back in the old days there was no video replay capabilities like we have today.  And, last but not least, back in the old days there were only 2 refs and not 3.  You assumed things were going to be missed, you assumed guys were going to get away with mugging each other a bit more.  People talk about the more physical game they played back then, vs the more athletic game we have today.  Well, in part, that was because there was one fewer shepherd and just as many wolves.

Maybe, if the refs were doing a better job, especially since there are more of them, all this would be moot.  I don't see this post-mortem review by the league being a problem if the refs did a better job in the first place.


bob


.

bob


 "People talk about the more physical game they played back then, vs the more athletic game we have today."

Much more athletic now then it was in the 50's-60's, but physically, those were the "no touchem" years of the nba. They could have played in gowns and tuxedos back then.

swish