Officials for tonight

no Violet, not Javie, no Crawford.

plus I kind of like Bavetta

And no Javie, whom Rice has a, misunderstanding with to say the least…

I remember the name Tony Brothers but can’t remember if that’s a good or bad thing. Don’t know the other guy.

and I think Javie is actually a good official. A lot better now than what I remember from a few years ago.

but I agree that no Palmer, no Crawford, no Wood is a good thing.

Bavetta used to be enemy #1 in the Jailblazer era, but he has turned around quite a bit.

http://www.nbastuffer.com/2008-2009_NBA_Referee_Stats.html

It looks like these refs are pretty middle of the line, their crews call about 43 fouls a game (very close to league average).

Bavetta, who is one of the few officials i like, has a call distribution of 50.7/49.3 away/home %, and the others are close (Jason Philips 51.5/48.4, and tony brothers 48.6/51.3, which is surprising since the visiting team almost always has more calls against them).

The only cause for concern i see is tony brothers’ crew, when he was main official, called almost twice as many T’s on the visitors as the home team (0.9/0.5 T’s/game, away/home), and as a crew official it was 1.0/0.7.

This crew should be fine.

BTW he is one weird looking Brother

Them eyebrows are scary

But it needs mentioning he was one of the officials during game 6 of the 2002 western conference finals. Here is some video of his spot on officiating.

Do you think the NBA assigned some of the better officials to this series because it’s a hard matchup to ref, as Dave suggested? Or, in other words, because the previous two games had problems?

….as Mike Rice likes to say, “Bob Delany thinks the fan come to the game to see him officiate.” Stupid mob hair….