Slow times as ChiBulls High

There is less than nothing going on in the world of Bulls news and gossip.  They signed their first and second round picks.  Big surprise.  I guess JamesOn Curry was a bit of a question mark in terms of making the team, but after his summer league performance nobody should be surprised he got the obligatory second-rounder’s unguaranteed contract.  Noah was a given and Aaron Gray was too because of his center size.  You always need a white guy over 7 feet who’s guaranteed to never play more than 5 minutes in a game.  Go back through all of the Bulls teams and you will find this guy.  The always entertaining Paul Shirley even filled this role at one point.

Newly Green

The Celtics started to round out their “championship caliber” team with Eddie House and Scot Pollard.  Not sure those guys will be enough, but you can’t really blame the Celtics.  They’ve made their move and now have to take what they can get for additional help.

 Marty Burns is saying that when the Grizzlies acquired JC Navarro any chance of trading Gasol ended.  I’ve been saying that Gasol to the Bulls chances have been over done for some time so this news doesn’t really affect Chicago.  The Darko signing was the end of Gasol’s chance of getting out of Memphis.  It showed the Griz are interested in building a team for the next 5 years as opposed to the next 10.  Pau will still be plenty good in 5 years. 

 Today’s ESPN TrueHoop quoted the Portland Tribune’s Dwight Jaynes.  He almost perfectly sums up the problem I have with NBA officiating and why I asked, “What credibility?”

The league, you see, is asking for uniformity in referee calls — and the 
refs think that’s taking away their personality and ability to use their 
own fine judgment.

While I sympathize with men attempting to perform one of the world’s 
toughest jobs, I find it extremely difficult to agree with them.

A lot of the veteran referees spent many years in the league as 
basketball’s version of the Lone Ranger. They roamed the country meting 
out their own forms of justice, largely as they pleased. There was 
little evaluation, and many of them thought of themselves as larger than 
the law.

And now that someone is trying to tell them how to do their job, they’re 
very uncomfortable.

But I’m afraid they’re going to have to get used to it or move on. 
Standardization of calls and uniformity is exactly what is needed. If 
nothing else, it’s a way of trying to eliminate bias — which, as I’ve 
written before, is the league’s biggest threat to fair officiating.

Oakland Raiders’ Managing Partner Al Davis, a bit of a rogue himself, 
was asked about the NBA’s referee scandal during a news conference 
recently and his answer was “I don’t worry about gambling, I worry about 
bias.”

A referee trying to manipulate a point spread late in a game to cover a 
bet he’s made somewhere? I don’t think there’s any reason to worry about 
it. I don’t think it’s going to happen very often.

But officials making certain calls because of a grudge against a player 
or a team, yes — I’ve seen it.

Officials so apparently in awe of a certain player they’re reluctant to 
call a foul or violation on him? Seen it many times.

Referees with obvious feuds going on against certain players or teams? 
Darned right. You’ve seen it, too, if you’ve watched the league for any 
time at all.

I don’t think the league, until recently, realized how much this 
affected its fan base. This sort of game-to-game bias, as much as any 
other thing, has turned millions of fans away from the league. I hear it 
constantly from disenchanted NBA fans.

And that’s too bad. NBA referees are tons better than college referees. 
But over the years, the league let them enforce the rules in a haphazard 
manner — often based on such precepts as rookie or veteran player, 
superstar or scrub, great team or cellar dweller — and it has obscured 
how well most of them can call a game.

Their personalities sometimes cloud their judgment. And that leaves the 
league no choice but to eliminate their personalities.

As a diehard NBA fan I can say that the one and only thing that ever comes close to making me consider giving up my league is the officiating.  I’ve talked to hardcore sports fans who don’t watch the NBA at all because they feel the officials have far too much influence on the outcome of the game.   It is the league’s biggest problem and something has to be done about it.

That said, I’m not sure I agree that the league has finally come to its senses and is now completely trustworthy.  In fact, I believe that some of the bias in how refs call games is a result of the league’s instructing them that they want games and series to remain entertaining as long as possible.  I doubt that the refs are in awe of great players.  The problem more often seems to be that they get into a battle of egos with dominant players and don’t give them calls.  When they are “in awe” of a superstar, I believe, it’s more because the league wants to sell their superstars to the casual basketball fan and it makes sure that the officials know that.  The more times Wade falls down but gets back up again for an and 1 the more time fans will see his handsome face up close at the line and the more points he’ll have in the box score.  If sometimes he goes up, comes down, is never touched and still ends up at the free throw line?  Well, the fans still see more of him, his season scoring average goes up, he appears in some I Love This Game NBA commercials and the referee who made the phantom call gets a on a Finals crew.  It may not be explicitly ordered by David Stern, but I believe the league is behind almost as much bad officiating as the personalities are.  They are both to blame and both need to change. 

 Who wants a random Joakim Noah picture for the day?

Look at the little guy.  It’s a good thing he upgraded from that Knicks jersey.

~ by 312chill on August 7, 2007.