While I tend to agree, I also believe professional basketball is the most difficult sport to officiate. Three ancient dudes trying to keep tabs on ten very well conditioned athletes running up and down the court at full tilt, cmon. The league has gotten younger with all the H.S.'ers, shouldn't the reffing crews benefit from some new, young blood?
The NBA is hilarious, Dick Bavetta and company running(and I say that in jest) with the young bulls, but there is no problem. The experience of the aged refs is important, but it is not effective without the use of cameras. However David stern abhors cameras, kill those replays. In baseball, ownership invests in giant plasma screens to replay almost every close play. In basketball, they just sweep alot of them under the rug and defend the blown calls, its pathetic. Like an alcoholic, the problem can't be addressed until its existence is admitted in the first place. And stern is like a lawyer, his instinct is to suppress evidence of errors. The NBA has created a very difficult officiating task by using player specific shades of grey in the applications of the contact rules. Add to that the flopping, the need to see APPARENT impact energy with the contact both on offense and defense. Its pathetic, to see 260 lb men fall down when bumped by 175 lb players, looks like a mike tyson punch decked them. Just makes me miss the showtime days, almost no flopping at all.
A stat should be calculated for the % of times a player falls down when dribble penetrating, parker would be like 85%, maybe the king of offensive flopping in the NBA. "I have to sell ze flop, eva, in order to get ze flagrant foul". Makes me kind of respect AI, he sure does take a hit most of the time when he falls. If Chris Paul ever learns how to sell the flop like TP, the NBA is in trouble, big trouble.
My bad.
