We had what....3 ticky tack offensive fouls called in a row early in the 4th? Meanwhile on the other end Perkins/Ibaka are shoving Durant's defender off of him to get him space and they get away with it, then when he drives and someone tries to D him up they get whistled again.
I don't think I've ever in all of my years criticized the officiating as others have but this was bad and when Duncan criticizes, you know its legit.
I'm not saying it won the Thunder the game -- they were better team -- but at be consistent with your calls.
NBA refs suck. We know this. But those are the same refs that gave you calls last series and the series before. Pretty sure no one here was complaining then. Stern should DO something about his piss-poor officials and their lack of consistency. But OKC was the better team. A game 7 would of just delayed the inevitable.
I thought Bill Kennedy had a pretty iffy night; he seemed particularly willing to give the call to those who sold it and probably got caught rewarding the flop a couple of times at least.
As I've said elsewhere, though, he's considered by the league to be among its very best officials. If one of your "best" officials can be that shaky in a crucial game, one wonders about the state of officiating -- from a technical standpoint -- in the league or, alternatively, about how the league evaluates its officials.
There's some merit (I think) to the question about the current state of the elite officials. In the last 5-6 years, the league has lost a lot of its older, more experienced officials and has had to quickly promote from within the ranks to replace the losses. If you look back to even the 2008 Finals, the 12 officials who worked that series 5 years ago were:
Bavetta
Dan Crawford
Joey Crawford
Bob Delaney
Joe Derosa
Scott Foster
Steve Javie
Ken Mauer
Ed F. Rush
Bennett Salvatore
Tom Washington
Mark Wunderlich
5 years later, Delaney, Javie, Salvatore, and Wunderlich are retired, Joe Derosa has chosen to be a collegiate official, and Bavetta and Rush are on their way out (collectively, they worked only 3 playoff games in 2012 and none after May 6). In five years, the league has lost or phased out 7 of the 12 best officials it had. You could arguably include Mike Callahan (who has worked every Finals since 2003 other than the 2008 Finals) in that group. You still have a 7 out of 13 turnover.
Those 7 have been replaced with, in essence, two groups of officials. You have a group consisting of officials who were going to move up anyway -- Monty McCutchen, Derrick Stafford, and Greg Willard. And you have a group of relatively inexperienced officials -- Bill Kennedy (who had called a total of 33 playoff games in 6 playoff years when he called his first Finals game in 2010), Ed Malloy (who got a conference semifinals Game 7 in only his 20th playoff game and called his first Finals game with only 21 career playoff games over 3 playoff years), and Marc Davis (who had called a total of 35 playoff games in 5 playoff years before calling his first Finals game). For sake of comparison, Dan Crawford worked his first Finals game in 1995, after having worked 57 playoff games; Steve Javie worked his first Finals game the same year after having worked 55 playoff games; Bob Delaney worked his first Finals game in 2001 after having worked 72 playoff games.
Other relatively inexperienced officials are being entrusted with some of the league's biggest games, too. In 2010, Jason Phillips had called a grand total of 8 playoff games in his career before getting assigned to Game 1 of the West Finals. In 2011, Zach Zarba had called a total of 12 playoff games in his career before being assigned to Game 1 of the West Finals. And this year, Rodney Mott had worked a total of 13 playoff games before being assigned to Game 3 of the East Finals.
You have to get experience somewhere, but I think there's a pretty strong argument that as attrition has pushed aside some of the older elite officials in the game, the league has artificially accelerated the progression of some younger officials and has risked quality in that process.
I have to agree with Timmy.
But Spurs blew it games 3-5.
Go San Antonio Thunder!
Duncan has played 15 years in the league, and I've can't ever recall him talking about the officials after the game except one time when Joey Crawford ejected him for laughing on the bench.
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