Column: Huge Balls

     by Rob Stiller

In the weeks leading up to the NBA playoffs this season, I shared a sentiment with Charles Barkley in that, as he stated during one of TNT’s Inside the NBA programs, “This is gon’ be the best playoffs ev’r.” Perhaps my expectations were too high, but so far I haven’t gotten what I had hoped for. I never thought the Suns-Spurs series would be over in five games. I never thought the best first round series would be Boston-Atlanta. And I certainly never anticipated being so distracted and disgusted at that standard of officiating that has cropped up this playoff season, part of which has been just bad officiating and part of which is due to how the league has chosen to handle certain situations, particularly the flagrant foul.

In order that this argument maintain some semblance of order and not digress into a typical blogosphere sort of rant, I’ll try to approach this in a somewhat structured manner.

The Complaints:
1) Most threatening to the state of the game as it presently exists is the appearance and prominence of what I’ve come to call “reactionary calls”. I don’t know if reactionary is a word, but I think it’s fairly descriptive of what’s going on. More and more referees are making calls based on the reaction to a foul rather than the foul itself. Take, for instance, Game 5 of the Suns-Spurs series, particularly the fourth quarter foul call on Shaq that was actually a result of Tim Duncan’s right leg tripping over his left and falling out of bounds. The referee making the call was in good position on the baseline, but clearly made the call in response to Duncan’s launching himself six to eight feet out of bounds, not because he actually saw the “push” for which he promptly whistled O’Neal. It’s a very “where there’s smoke, there must be fire, right?” approach to officiating and I’m certain I’m not alone in being concerned about the direction that it could take NBA play.

2) Somewhat of an extension of the previous complaint, I am aghast at the number of flagrant foul calls we’ve already seen in the playoffs. It happens every game. Someone makes a steal, and one player on the opposing team has the opportunity to prevent the easy basket by putting a hard foul on the offensive player. Unfortunately, in nearly every one of these instances, the player being fouled makes sure he lands upside down, contorts his body and rolls into the third row of photographers, leaving the crowd, coaches, commentators and other players up in arms over the egregious act to which they’ve just born witness. After much deliberation, the flagrant foul is usually called. I have a problem with this for two reasons. First, these are grown men. It’s not your kid’s rec league we’re talking about. These are very large, very strong professional athletes. They can take a hard foul every once in awhile. Second, if anyone in one of these situations ever actual gets hurt, it’s probably because the player taking the foul is more concerned with flailing about on his way down than maintaining his balance and walking away (this happened in Game 1 of Spurs-Hornets when Tony Parker flopped after a pretty run-of-the-mill push and actually ended up hitting his own head on the floor, which predictably resulted in him popping back up with a Tim Duncan look of disbelief)

The Causes:
The influx of international players and subsequent flopping as a generally accepted part of soccer has been discussed at length on most outlets I’ve seen. At this point, that’s just a part of the game that can’t realistically be curbed, as it’s how most of these guys grew up playing sports. What isn’t talked about as much but I feel is probably on a lot of people’s mind is the NBA’s quest to shed its “thug” image. Often times referees are forced to call fouls because they have to “make sure things don’t escalate” or “keep guys in check” as the commentators would generally have us believe. The real intent, as far as the league is concerned, is that we the viewers aren’t reminded that these are young, angry, aggressive black thugs for fear of offending the small, white woman demographic. Since the Brawl at the Palace, the league has made a concerted effort to eliminate all aggression and emotion for fear of that the fans would interpret such competitive play as thuggish. Unfortunately David Stern appears hell bent on making this image overhaul his legacy as commissioner. Not only is this policy insulting for its negative impact on the game, it’s insulting that the league feels I’m not discerning enough to separate the player from the league.

The other cause of such thoughtless officiating is the lingering lack of accountability among referees. I’m told the refs are scrutinized after every game, but the same problems have only become more exaggerated over time. I can only imagine I would be fired after making the same mistake on the job four to five times. But some of the most experienced refs in the game are often the ones calling the same touch fouls game after game at the faintest hint of a flop. That is to say, the encompassing reason why such calls linger in the NBA is because they get the call. And there’s nothing even the most educated fan can do about that unless his name is David Stern or Stu Jackson.

One would have thought that quality of officiating would have experienced considerable improvement after the Tim Donaghy incident last summer. But so far in these playoffs, I have been legitimately distracted and disheartened by the regularity of phantom fouls called as a result of theatrical falls. Now here’s the good stuff. The video evidence.