Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big story line. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.
One of the best bargain contracts in the NBA looked even more valuable last season, as ________ took a big step forward in his offensive game. He posted notable career-highs in both his field goal and 3-point shooting percentages, helping the Celtics turn into a top-10 rated NBA offense.
Guess the player? Could be Bradley, Thomas or Crowder, right?
In this case, it’s Crowder. Brian Robb goes down the roster and give every player a grade (you get two guesses who logs the team’s lowest).
Robb’s been grading Celtics stuff for quite a while, formerly for CelticsHub, and now for Boston.com, the free Globe affiliated website. There aren’t many surprises in this end of season summary–I tend to think that he graded Kelly Olynyk a shade too high, but then it’s easy for me to nitpick–I didn’t have to grade everyone from Amir to Zeller.
Page 2: Where I grade the NBA’s officiating: F
https://twitter.com/BillCorbett/status/873390168132263936
Those three officials will go back to their locker room & start crying. They'll look at their phones & hope there's not a 212 area code call
— Fran Fraschilla (@franfraschilla) June 10, 2017
https://twitter.com/SInow/status/873382974808616965
The NBA’s officiating is appalling.
It’s appalling. It’s not getting better, and the NBA doesn’t seem to care. At all.
In fact, there is evidence that the NBA considers its shoddy officiating to be a “feature”, not a “bug”.
What did they do when the Boston/Washington series was getting too chippy? They sent two of the quickest whistles in the league to game six.
I can’t believe that was accidental. I think the league is not only aware of the idiosyncrasies among their referees, they view the unpredictability, or the predictability, of poor officiating as an asset that they can use to manage games that might get out of hand.
Of course I say that, and then games like the one last night happen. No one who watched last night’s game could walk away confident that the NBA’s officials are assigned on the basis of competence–or that the league has anyone competent assigning officials in the first place.
Then there’s the “Last Two Minute Report”–this is the NBA’s attempt to appear to do something while not doing anything at all. It’s Adam Silver stealing a page from the David Stern playbook. None of the players like those reports because they don’t change a thing, and none of the officials like the reports because they don’t like having their bosses second guess them in public with the benefit of unlimited slow motion replay. The coaches don’t like it, fans don’t like it. Nobody not named Adam Silver likes it, and yet there it sits. The NBA’s attempt to dodge any kind of reform of their officiating system.
And make no mistake, the NBA’s officials are the worst in a professional league in the United States, and not by a small margin.
No league has a bigger hole to climb out of in terms of credibility, no league has had the scandals that the NBA has had over the last 15 years (not just the Donaghy scandal, but referees regularly hitting up players for autographs and gym passes), no league has the kind of “suspicious” games that the NBA has had over the past 15 years. And no league has done less than the NBA to improve its officiating.
I’m not going to spend time making suggestions for how the league can take to improve officiating. Offering suggestions is only of use if the league is willing to admit they have a problem.
And I think it’s safe to say that’s not going to happen any time soon.
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