however I get tired of the conspiracy theories and so forth tho. Yeah they are human, but that is why there are 3 refs on the floor.

i will share a story w/ you. My brother has been a CYO and Boys and Girls CLub bball ref for almost 8 years now. He does it on Saturday and Sunday and yes he gets paid but i think he enjoys it and has fun rather than just for the money. Every saturday evenin he will share w/ me the story of how “so and so drove 2 the basket and I just knew he was gonna travel so I called it…i dunno if he did tho” or “such and such is a winer i love to see the look on his face when i call a foul on him when he really didnt do anything” My brother isnt an ass he just like s having that power and I think that this can go for the refs in the NBA.
They are total nerds that are exerting power of these players. Remember how Tim Duncan got called for a Technical when he was on the bench and didnt say anything, just rolled his eyes? That is BS and the ref did it just cuz.. HE CAN. It has nothing to do w/ education or lack there-of .

The real reason the Spurs lost that game wasnt b/c of the No-call rather their CRAP play the ENTIRE game..they should have won period…they just werent good enough and w/ the way things were going you know he would have missed one of the FT and it would have ended the same.

Does anyone remember the game here at the RG when the Cleveland LBJ’s ehh um i mean cavs came back from 14 down and lebrons layup in the final seconds of the 4th q. won it for them? well after EVERYONE says “he traveled he took 4 steps he took 77 steps he never put the ball on the floor sooo unfair the refs favor him and hate the blazers!!!” well in my opinion the Blazers should never have allowed that one player to score 18 pts in 1 quarter and shoot 30 % they played like crap in the 4 th q and that is what happens the refs wont win it.. period

In reality, every ref there knew there was a foul. They are well trained. They are heavily disciplined. I have no problem with this call. The ref is not supposed to determine the outcome of the game. Barry could have helped force them into making a call by trying to shoot through Fisher, but he tried to dribble around him, what the heck was he thinking? He’s a vet having the playoff game of his career and when it counts he makes a silly mistake. That said, I would like to have seen that call because the momentum was with the Spurs, it was a home game, and Barry would have hit all three shots. It’s Barry’s fault if it’s anyones. They quite simply are told to let them play at the ends of important games. I have no problem with calls like these. I have a problem with Kobe Bryant pushing Brandon Roy out of bounds and then hitting the shot and nobody blows the whistle.

except, there’s Shaq who made a career out of delivering a forearm shiver and then taking two steps plus a hop.

And of course karl malone who got more calls than any living human, who would get into a scrum and fly backwards like he was shot from a gun.

And Bruce Bowen, who if they actually called handchecks on him like they do everyone else would last about 10 minutes in each game

And…

but I put Nature because the game of basketball is complex and dynamic. The refering could definitely be better but the nature of the game puts a limit on the accuracy of any ref, no matter how well trained. Plus, players are always going to be looking for an edge and they will be testing the limits of the game and how much they can get away with before the ref blows his whistle.

Carrying the ball might be one of the best examples of a rule that seems like it should be easy to enforce but never works in practice. Every ball handler carries the ball at some point during a game and many do so every time they touch the ball. But if the ref blew his whistle every time the game would be slowed to a crawl.

I think expanding the use of instant replay would help. Maybe start hiring ex-NBA or D-league type guys to ref games because they know what it’s like to play at a high level. How many short-unathletic white refs are there in the league? And what about adding another ref? 2 in the backcourt and 2 along the baseline? 1 at each sideline, 1 in the back and 1 on the baseline? I don’t know.

Only one f

That said, Refs make bad calls and there needs to be a way to learn from mistakes and hold people accountable if mistakes are made repeatedly. Basketball players have smarts, how about building up the smarts of the refs to match them?

Stern handles the ref situation horribly. It may be conspiracy or it may be that he just is a freaking idiot. Refs need to be transparent and clean and shouldn’t even have a chance to tweak the games for their own profit.

As for the call itself, I didn’t see it. If it clearly altered the shot, it needed to be called though. that would be a clear foul. I would error on the side of not calling at the end of a game if that foul would change it. However, obvious fouls would obviously be called.

I honestly can’t wait until someone takes over for Stern.

Despite what side you take, The Refs are Okay, they do the best they can, or They are generally horrible and influencing outcome of games too much, I’ve seen the “perception” that the Refs are influencing outcome grow in the past few years. The very fact that we are debating the issue is indicative of a problem.

Of course in a 48 minute game one can argue that the game is never really lost on one single play or one single call but often especially with Basketball in the N.B.A. when two excellent teams are playing pretty close, one play, one call can make a huge difference.

I don’t know, when I’m calm and thinking about it I don’t think the N.B.A. is rigged, I don’t think there is any secret agenda to determine outcome, BUT I do think the perception that refs are influencing outcome beyond their scope is growing, which means to me that The N.B.A. needs to do something. If that means more training, firing some refs, teams being allowed an in the game challenge of a call or non-call? I don’t know, but the very perception and the debate tells me that regardless the N.B.A. has a problem.

Was listening to the Herd last night, and the dude makes a great point in that basketball is perhaps the most subjectively ref’d sport out there. You’re going to have bad calls both ways.

However, aside from the ref-betting scandal, I don’t really see refs as biased, so I think the calls shake out and no team is heavily favored. I say in an average game the refs totally blow 10 calls, but maybe 7 go the other team’s way and only 3 go your way.

The next game, you’re going to have 6 of those 10 go your way, and 4 go the other team’s way. In the end, it all shakes out.

And by the way….if over the course of a hundred possessions you can’t overcome an error margin of two or three possessions, you don’t deserve to win.