Dwight Howard is a good basketball player.
He sure has some great moves!
He can also block with both hands. No Hawks player in the history of the league has done that. Not even Jon Koncak.
Star players get calls because refs are already looking for contact even before it happens. One part is that they’ve established an expectation of contact already, so if you’re an NBA ref (which is honestly a very difficult job) trying to keep up with the high speed of the game, that’s what you do. Say you have a very undersized police force in a city with high crime rate…if you want to catch criminals, you step up patrols in the areas of the city with the highest rate of crime.
Same with refs - ideally they should see everything, but that’s just not a realistic probability. You keep objective as much as you, but when you look at a play already expecting contact (as normal viewers do as well) then that’s letting subjectivity affect your calling of the game. Which is unavoidable until we get high speed cameras and robots officiating the games instead of human beings.
All this I understand. Refs are human, and it’s really humanly impossible to properly call an NBA game correctly 100% of the time.
What’s boggling to me though is that you have all these world class athletes running around at breakneck speeds, playing a very physical game at the highest level in the world…so why are the officials that you hire all like decrepit senior citizens?
Shouldn’t they be similarly equipped to handle the speed of the game as the athletes? Why are none of the officials world-class athletes themselves, or at least people at the prime of their cognitive abilities, instead of old fogeys that should be in homes and need their grandchildren to speak up louder in their good ears?
If Dick Bavetta can’t outrun Charles Barkley, then why is he expected (and paid) to keep up with ten guys moving at like a hundred times the speed?
The game is fast. So why is the “experience” of an official and how many games he’s worked the biggest selling point of his ability? Shouldn’t it be almost the opposite? The more you work = the older you are = the less able you are to perform. It should be just like the players, I don’t expect Kobe to still be playing at Dick Bavetta’s age, much less be given as prominent a role as Bavetta has.
Just like driver licenses, once you turn a certain age you should be continually retested to make sure you’re not senile - you shouldn’t be awarded for old age and trusted with more crucial games to call.
Realistically, the refs don’t have to run as far up and down the court, and not at all laterally.
More important would probably be for them to know where to look and what to look for.
Leon Powe:sad:
NBA referees hate the Toronto Raptors. Truth.
David Stern totally needs to address his refs age issues. We need some NHL ref standards where they have to go through fitness tests and shit. Also make sure they all have great vision and go through classes together or something.
Oh well, I barely pay attention to the refs because the sixers suck ass anyway. I just pay attention to fantasy statz
At least you have a team. I have to pay attention to fantasy stats, because we don’t even have a team anymore. :mad:
Just bandwagon on Portland until the Hornets move up there.
I actually went south a little further and now on the King’s bandwagon. Tyreke Evans ftw! :rock:
glitch in the matrix!:looney:
That can be star team getting the calls at home!:wonder:
Dammit Satomi.
There no stats to tell if a player make his team better or not, but damn Chris Paul would be leading that stats if there was one. He doesn’t always get the assist, but he will set his team in position so they can get the assist.
Contact fouls in the paint needs to be TOTALLY revamped. Blocking fouls need to be TOTALLY revamped. THE NBA doesn’t let people play defense. Why should you only get a charge call when standing upright and not moving!?!? It makes NO sense. No one is supposed to be playing defense standing straight up and not moving. Contact on the body shouldn’t be called unless its seriously alters a shot. Fouls on the arm should not be called unless it alters a shot.
I’m pretty sure that what the +/- stat is all about. It your team better when you’re on the floor.
+/- is extremely misleading.
Sometimes when Kobe and Lebron get hot whoever on the floor with them just getting free +.
Or like when Brandon Jennings went off for 55.
Anderson Varejao always has some amazing ass +/-. Better than Lebron’s +/- a lot of times too.
That +/- stat isn’t reliable. I remember reading an article saying that Durant is actually making the Thunder worse because of the team’s +/- numbers when he’s on the floor is worse compared to when he isn’t on the court.
They may be doing the intangibles that you’re talking about, moving without the ball, keeping their defender on them so Kobe or Lebron gets open shots. (shrug)
You want to know why? Because he plays too man damn minutes a game and his +/- suffer from it. For example Thunder are up by 5 points. Jeff Green takes a seat on the bench. Other team goes on 15-0 run. Thunder put Green back in the game. Now Green has a much better +/- than Durant. Was it Durant fault other team went on a big ass run?
Yea Durant had a terrible +/- stat last year. I read some analyst saying he would take any other player than Durant because of how bad his +/- was at. But without doing any research at all I think Durants has a decent +/- now.