After attending last night's embarrasing performance against Utah, I have to say that I have had ENOUGH of the replacement officials the NBA is using in the preseason.  Don't get me wrong, the Blazers have lacked urgency and execution in the preseason, and last night's game was no exception - they looked like they were just running through the motions (to be fair we were without Oden, Aldridge, Fernandez, and Batum).  As someone who has played a lot of ball over the years, I am usually very hesistant to ever blame the results of a game on the referees - they are human like everyone else and can make mistakes and mis-reads, but last night it got to a ridiculous point.

The problems with the replacement officials are inconsistency and over-thinking.  They KNOW they are replacement officials, and you can almost see them overthinking calls.  Several times last night, you would see a Jazz player flail or react to a play, and the refs blew the whistle - not because they saw a foul, but because they saw a reaction.  Almost as if they are thinking "oh if he reacted like that and I don't make the call I'm going to get an ear-full".  There were two specific situations that come to mind - one when Okur drove against a perfectly upright Pryzbilla and drew a call, and another when Deron Williams drive the lane with the same result.  I actually started making a list of the bad calls on my phone, but just stopped counting early in the 3rd quarter there were so many.

The other problem is inconsistency.  While the officials repeatedly blew whistles for weak touch fouls (read - just about every fould called on Blake and Pryzbilla), they did not blow the whistle when Brandon Roy drove baseline and colided with Brewer (sending both to the floor), or when Jarron Collins went up under the hoop and was hacked across the forearm.  And while overall I thought the Blazers got the short end of the stick, the Jazz got hit with some  touch fouls against us as well.  I don't care if the refs are calling a tight game, as long as they are consistent and it goes both ways.  But it was if the refs couldn't decide what they wanted to stick to last night. 

What made matters worse was that they were all obvious to even casual fans, and as soon as the play was replayed on the big screen the crowd went balistic because it was visually obvious that the wrong call was made.  You know something is wrong when 3 guys on the court can't see or make the call, but a bunch of fans sitting up in 200 level knew it was horrible before they even show the replay.

Once again, I'm not saying that we lost BECAUSE of the refs - we didn't play well.  But the refs were HORRIBLE last night.  It's no coincidence that David Stern met with the referees union emergency-style yesterday and that it sounds like we will get the real refs back for the start of the regular season, I think the league knows how bad these replacments are too. 

I never thought I'd say it - BUT GIVE ME STEVE JABBY AND JOEY CRAWFORD!!!!