A Whole New Ball Game

Congrats to the dems – I can’t claim any piece of the victory because I’m not a registered democrat and I didn’t even vote (didn’t register in time). Put I do share everyone’s optimism, so go us!

Since I haven’t blogged in awhile, I think I need to address the most pressing issue of the recent weeks – that’s right, the new NBA zero tolerance of whining about officiating. If you haven’t heard, the NBA is calling technical fouls on any player who complains about a call.

Now David Stern is a smart guy. He doesn’t really think that the constant whining is a threat to the sanctity of the NBA. The real problem of course is that the officiating in the NBA is horrible, and Stern is fully aware of this. So instead of trying to crack down on shitty calls, he just wants us to try and forget that games are rarely decided by the players.

Example, last night I finally had the chance to watch a couple of games. 70% of the calls in the 10 minutes of basketball that I watched were wrong. 50% were blatantly wrong, obviously wrong.

The real travesty of the rule is not how it affects the game, its how it affect my life and the experience of watching basketball. Usually when the refs blow a call, I yell at the TV and the offended player yells as well, or frowns, or at least rolls his eyes. I get to live vicariously through the players who bitch at these shitty refs. Then I take comfort in the fact that they go home and feel guilty for being so horrible at their job. Now these injustices just linger on the conscience like my neighbors loitering in front of my apartment.

The silliest part of the rule is that players can no longer bounce the ball off the goal post, for any reason. Kenny Thomas got whistled for that last night. It’s really absurd because it was totally unrelated the officiating. But then I think, why are the players just taking this? Don’t they have a union? I say they should bounce the ball off the post after every single basket. See if Stern lets the refs call a technical foul after every basket. Somebody needs to put that punk in his place. I nominate Jude.