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The league admitting their mistakes and issuing apologies has never prevented poor officiating, tbh..
Still a bit more transparency about officiating from the post-Stern NBA. Steve Aschburner wrote a couple of days ago about some referee-related playoff issues that the league addressed with the media within the last week.
A couple of tidbits that I found interesting:
1. There are now specific publicly-known points of emphasis for the 2014 playoffs, including:
a. Freedom of movement, including illegal screens.
b. Traveling calls, especially on the perimeter.
c. Point-of-contact plays, before, during and after shot attempts. “We have clarified the rule for teams, that if it affects the natural follow-through, even though the ball was released, we would penalize the defender,” Vaden said. “Hits on the elbow, we’ve gotten better at.”
d. Push or pull plays, physically redirecting an opponent.
e. Delay-of-game calls for handling the ball after it passes through the net. Said Vaden: “Everybody complained, but after about a month of the season, everybody’s running from the ball. The players have done a great job in adapting to this.”
f. Verticality. “It’s easy for us to call ‘A’ to ‘B’ movement,” Vaden said, referring to a defender who goes up in the air but not quite straight up. “As the season went on, we saw more of the defender turning in the air and [confronting the ball handler] with his side.” That’s a defensive foul too. But a scorer who wards off the defender with an arm, leads with a knee or elbow or even “displaces” the man so he cannot rebound can wind up with an offensive foul.
2. Last year in the playoffs, for the first time, the league consistently assigned pairs (and sometimes even entire crews) of officials throughout the playoffs and it appears that the same thing will happen this year too. For those who like this sort of thing, the "crewing" of the officials, which hadn't ever really happened in recent years to any significant extent, was pretty obvious in the conference finals:
a. McCutchen and Brothers worked 3 games and each worked with the other in all 3 games (and those two worked with Jason Phillips in 2 of their 3 games).
b.Danny Crawford worked exclusively with James Capers and Marc Davis (though that likely would have changed had the Spurs-Grizzlies series been extended).
c. Joey Crawford worked exclusively with Derrick Stafford.
d. Foster and Kennedy worked 2 games together.
It was really obvious in the conference semifinals, where:
a. Ken Mauer worked 4 games, all with Ed Malloy and Tom Washington;
b. Danny Crawford worked 4 games and spent 3 of them with Davis and Phillips;
c. Scott Foster worked 4 games and worked 3 of them with Bill Kennedy and John Goble;
d. Joey Crawford worked 4 games and spent 3 of them with Derrick Stafford and 2 of those were Crawford-Stafford-Sean Corbin crews.
Overall, during the course of the entire playoff season, Ken Mauer and Ed Malloy worked 12 games together, Danny Crawford and Marc Davis worked 12 games together, Scott Foster and Bill Kennedy worked 11 games together, and a number of pairs worked at least 6 games together, including Joey Crawford/Derrick Stafford; Danny Crawford/Jason Phillips; and Mike Callahan/Tom Washington. I thought at the time that it made for better officiated playoff games pretty much across the board; obviously, they weren't perfect and there was still some controversy, but not nearly as much as in previous years.
3. The league will have a twitter account to provide clarifications on rules/fouls in something close to real time (@NBAOfficial). This exists during the regular season too, but seems likely to be more active during the playoffs.
We'll see how it all goes, but I don't know that we've ever had this sort of a guidebook about officiating entering the playoffs.
The league admitting their mistakes and issuing apologies has never prevented poor officiating, tbh..
Cool. I like this.
@RefAnalytics is an interesting follow, too.
Lots of specific numbers about the propensity of particular officials to make particular calls developed through years of analysis of every call; the numbers are proprietary, but they publish some tidbits here and there that are sometimes illuminating.
@NBAOfficial
Why can't we wear those nifty Thunder uniforms? #notfair #makeitofficial #methnation
"But a scorer who wards off the defender with an arm, leads with a knee or elbow or even “displaces” the man so he cannot rebound can wind up with an offensive foul."
They'll never ever call this on Westbrook, the most blatant offender.
A whole lot to say nothing of interest. When there is a statement that states Durant, Westbrook and Harden won't live at the FT line then we are onto something. Or the ripthru is an offensive foul
We all need to make a big stink about it on the twitter account. The way the games are called when we play okc are the worst I've ever seen. They always get away with murder but it's much worse against us.
I would hope refs watch tape just like players. Every smart player has his own way of manufacturing calls yet some seem to succeed *durant* at it quite well. I think consistency is really all anyone wants.
No . Perk moves on pretty much every screen, a legacy from Doc and Boston.
Yup. He and Garnett were the masters at that in Boston. Perkins has definitely brought that over to OKC now, with Ibaka and Collison joining him in the moving screen fun...
a fair calling of moving screens would be huge for the Spurs tbh
NBA rescinded the technical on TD last night, per Mike Monroe.
Just thought I'd share.
They also rescinded the T on Michael Finely, "does that mean we won?"
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thanks