After another unnecessary ejection of a Celtics star (Jaylen Brown’s first career ejection) I thought it might be good to start a thread where complaints about NBA refs could be consolidated.
Personally, I have always felt that basketball’s biggest flaw is that accurate officiating is an impossible challenge. The game is too fast and the rules too vague; as a result officials are unable to consistently identify rule violations in real time. The officiating error that results is so common that it can be easily argued that most close games are decided within what could be called an “officiating margin of error”.
This flaw, inevitably, also leads to an inordinate amount of complaints from players, which -unfortunately - leads to technical violations and ejections which only compounds the games inherent, officiating problem. After all, the effect of these technicals and ejections also impacts scores and rosters and this only increases the referee’s influence on wins and losses.
It is this second issue that I believe could be most easily addressable through rule changes, though this is admittedly not the current direction of the league. In fact, the trend appears to be towards empowering the refs to call even more techs which has led to more ejections. This, unfortunately, has only resulted in an increasing influence of officiating on game results.
From this perspective, things like Jaylen Brown’s ejection (when he apparently made a gesture from the bench) last night and Giannis Antetokoumpo’s odd ejection last month ( after he looked in the direction of an opposing player after a dunk) are problems that need to be addressed by the league. I would also add to this the recent trend of giving technicals for hanging on the rim too long, something that is particularly maddening as hanging on the rim too long naturally results in players being out of defensive position and could instead be seen as already “regulated” by natural consequence.
As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post on a different thread, I personally think that best solution to this issue is to shift game conditions so that these type of natural consequences are more likely, and move away from emphasizing the unnatural and more subjective influence of referees to moderate player behavior.
After all, over-calling technicals stops the flow of the game and can lead to the loss of key players at key moments. Instead, when players complain the refs should shift their focus to restarting the action of the game ASAP, making it more likely that that complaining players will be out of position for the next play. On a basic level this could be done by the ref making an effort to walk away from a complaining player while another ref makes sure that the fouled player initiates free throw shooting as soon as possible. The key is that the focus of the referee needs to shift from “maintaining order” to “maintaining game flow”, something that is also clearly better for the viewer.
To facilitate this, it might very well be necessary to establish more concrete rules to facilitate better game flow and increased natural consequences, particularly after foul calls (which is when most complaints occur).
For example, for shooting fouls maybe a free throw clock would help (requiring free throw shooting to begin within some amount of seconds from the foul). For non-shooting fouls an inbound clock could limit how much time a team has to initiate the inbound play after the call. While these rules would still need to be regulated through technicals, these would be objectively enforceable (unlike most current technicals) as they would be a simple result of a player being out of position by a set time. In a sense, this would be similar to how the NFL regulates these issues, in that players are often too busy running back and forth from the sidelines to maintain any sustained complaints.
Personally, I have always felt that basketball’s biggest flaw is that accurate officiating is an impossible challenge. The game is too fast and the rules too vague; as a result officials are unable to consistently identify rule violations in real time. The officiating error that results is so common that it can be easily argued that most close games are decided within what could be called an “officiating margin of error”.
This flaw, inevitably, also leads to an inordinate amount of complaints from players, which -unfortunately - leads to technical violations and ejections which only compounds the games inherent, officiating problem. After all, the effect of these technicals and ejections also impacts scores and rosters and this only increases the referee’s influence on wins and losses.
It is this second issue that I believe could be most easily addressable through rule changes, though this is admittedly not the current direction of the league. In fact, the trend appears to be towards empowering the refs to call even more techs which has led to more ejections. This, unfortunately, has only resulted in an increasing influence of officiating on game results.
From this perspective, things like Jaylen Brown’s ejection (when he apparently made a gesture from the bench) last night and Giannis Antetokoumpo’s odd ejection last month ( after he looked in the direction of an opposing player after a dunk) are problems that need to be addressed by the league. I would also add to this the recent trend of giving technicals for hanging on the rim too long, something that is particularly maddening as hanging on the rim too long naturally results in players being out of defensive position and could instead be seen as already “regulated” by natural consequence.
As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post on a different thread, I personally think that best solution to this issue is to shift game conditions so that these type of natural consequences are more likely, and move away from emphasizing the unnatural and more subjective influence of referees to moderate player behavior.
After all, over-calling technicals stops the flow of the game and can lead to the loss of key players at key moments. Instead, when players complain the refs should shift their focus to restarting the action of the game ASAP, making it more likely that that complaining players will be out of position for the next play. On a basic level this could be done by the ref making an effort to walk away from a complaining player while another ref makes sure that the fouled player initiates free throw shooting as soon as possible. The key is that the focus of the referee needs to shift from “maintaining order” to “maintaining game flow”, something that is also clearly better for the viewer.
To facilitate this, it might very well be necessary to establish more concrete rules to facilitate better game flow and increased natural consequences, particularly after foul calls (which is when most complaints occur).
For example, for shooting fouls maybe a free throw clock would help (requiring free throw shooting to begin within some amount of seconds from the foul). For non-shooting fouls an inbound clock could limit how much time a team has to initiate the inbound play after the call. While these rules would still need to be regulated through technicals, these would be objectively enforceable (unlike most current technicals) as they would be a simple result of a player being out of position by a set time. In a sense, this would be similar to how the NFL regulates these issues, in that players are often too busy running back and forth from the sidelines to maintain any sustained complaints.
