Why Is NBA Officiating So Bad?

Sadly, the main discussion surrounding this year's NBA basketball playoffs isn't the great play, but the obviously bad officiating. 

Let's be honest: Whenever our favorite teams lose, we fans always find something suspect about the officiating. But no matter what team or player you favor, I suspect most of you will agree that the NBA's officiating leaves a good deal to be desired. 

Why is the NBA's officiating so much worse than that of the National Football League or Major League Baseball's? 

This photograph shows an obvious, missed call. Orlando's Dwight Howard blocks a dunk by the Laker's Pau Gasol, by reaching through the net -- which is goal-tending. 

This play isn't hidden, hard to see, subtle, or subjective -- Howard's arm is going through the basket and his hand is tangled in the net, yet the officials ruled this a legal block. In a game that went into overtime, this blown call could have made the difference, it could even have decided the championship. 

Still, I have less of a problem with officials missing fouls that actually happened, than when they call fouls that never occurred. 

Clearly, officials are human and anyone can miss a call, either because they didn't see it, or didn't react quickly enough. That happens in every sport. And there are many subjective calls in basketball -- the difference between charging and blocking is often a fine line. 

What makes the NBA different than other, major sports is the preponderance of fouls or other calls that are made when nothing happened, or when fouls are called according to which players are involved. That, in my opinion, is what makes NBA officiating so markedly inferior to that of the NFL and MLB. 

Players are called for fouls when they never touched their opponent. Balls are called out of bounds off a player that in extreme cases couldn't even reach the ball. To understand why this happens, let's spend a few sentences on the evolution of NBA officiating. In the good old days, officials called plays more or less by the rule book. 

Then the pace and size of the players increased. The "let them play" crowd prevailed, their argument being that whistles and foul shots disrupted the flow of the game. The result of "letting them play" was a disaster, that would have gotten much worse if the NBA hadn't changed how plays were called. A couple of examples from the innumerable list: Detroit's Bill Laimbeer grabbing Boston's Larry Bird around the neck and driving his head into the floor. Not only could Bird have been crippled, the ensuing scuffle got both players ejected, which was a big competitive plus for Detroit. So, in the next game the normally mild-mannered Bill Parish had to play enforcer and knocked Laimbeer flat with an elbow. The officials didn't call a foul, but the league suspended Parish. 

Too late, the damage had been done. Every team now sent in its own enforcer, seeing how you could win games by cheating: Have a back-up thug hack a star and he is either injured or they get in a fight and both get ejected. An example: The Laker's Rick Fox throwing Scottie Pippen to the floor in a playoff game giving Pippen an apparent concussion. Pippen stayed in the game, but was out of it, dribbling the ball off his leg, throwing the ball into the stands when no team mate was near, so the Lakers won. 

This forced the NBA to start calling more fouls, and to create tiers of fouls. Still, under the misguided influence of the "let them play" crowd, they compromised by in effect telling the refs to favor the big stars -- call more fouls, just not on certain players. Fans wanted to see big name stars succeed, and the NBA either implicitly or explicitly set two standards. As Oscar Robertson once reportedly said when asked if he was impressed by Michael Jordan: "Anybody can make a layup if he takes six steps." 

NBA Commissioner David Stern had decided to promote individual stars over their teams, and that made the stars more important than the integrity of the game. 

This led to the dullest period in NBA history. We saw the low-post game take the NBA to new lows. Every team with a big center such as Shaquille O'Neal would walk the ball up, get in a half-court set, gently lob the ball into their center, such as O'Neal, who would violate innumerable rules from charging, to elbowing, to traveling. Officiating in the Lakers-Sacramento playoff series was so blatantly one-sided even Ralph Nader called for an investigation to see if the NBA fixed the games. The "let them play" group had effectively prevented basketball from being played in the NBA.  

Fan interest fell so finally, the NBA reacted -- and characteristically, over-reacted. A memo was reportedly sent to officials instructing them to call fouls they didn't see based on players reactions. The result was a comical NBA final series, with Miami beating Dallas. Miami's star Dwayne Wade simply ran through the lane jumping, flailing and flopping his way to a record number of free throws that made the series unwatchable.

Think about that: Calling fouls you didn't see. Imagine if an NFL ref said, "You must have committed holding because the man you were blocking fell down," or a MLB umpire said "That's a strike because you meant to swing", yet that kind of silliness is a regular occurrence, not an occasional aberration, in the NBA.   

So, now we have today's situation. NBA officials are supposed to call tighter games and be quicker to call technicals and flagrant fouls. This gets the game under control and has reduced the level of violence. But we still have calls made according to who the player is, which official is making the call, and what game is being played. One of the most blatant examples occurred when the Celtics beat the Chicago Bulls this year; Celtic guard Rajon Rondo punched the Bull's Brad Miller in the mouth as he was about to make a game-tying shot in the last second. The league inexplicably ruled this was not a flagrant foul, then later ruled that merely tripping the Laker's Kobe Bryant or pushing him in the back was a flagrant foul.  

This year, LeBron James was called for far fewer fouls per minute played than any ball handler or shooter I can think of in history. He was called for far fewer fouls than Michael Jordan, even fewer than Wilt Chamberlain, and a great deal less than Kobe Bryant. When you consider that James' standard play is to pick up his dribble at the top of the lane (or even the top of the key) and run through the lane scattering opponents like bowling pins, the fact that he never fouled out of a single game and got fewer than two fouls per game is hard to explain. To use the NBA's own standard: Even if you didn't see it, it sure looks foul.

It is as if there is a different rule book for every official, for every team, and for every player.  

The NBA needs to clean up its act: Retrain the officials, ignore the "let them play" crowd that has done the sport so much damage (if the calls are consistent, you can actually make fewer of them) teach them to call the plays consistently across the league, don't accept that one set of officials is tight and another is not; replace the head of officiating, add another on-court official; re-negotiate the official's contracts with less job security and more performance pay. 

And, yes, add replay challenges with Coaches allowed to demand review of critical calls. This can be managed so it doesn't add extensive delays. I'd like to see a system that borrows from both the NFL and tennis: Give the coaches up to two, incorrect challenges per game, with an incorrect challenge costing a time out. Change the rule that says if a player can't make his own foul shots the opposing team gets to choose who takes those shots, since this rewards violent attacks on star players. 

These are great athletes. We pay to watch them play, not to watch foul shots, but we also don't want to watch them cheat or win by attacking each other like muggers.