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Now tonight has a lot more e to it than before.
If you actually believe that, why would you watch?
Now tonight has a lot more e to it than before.
He doesn't. He says things like that so he can say "see? I told ya" if his team loses.
It will be interesting to see this on a long-term basis. If there is truth to what Van Gundy said, the league will be on a witchhunt to out the official who spilled the beans. If there's an odd firing of a pretty good official before next season, I'd think we'd have our answer.
I can believe that the league responds to criticism by being hypervigilant about calling certain things, but I can't believe that it dictates calls to favor one team or another. If it did, and it was ever found out, the NBA would be over. Ever catch the movie "Quiz Show," or hear about the Congressional investigation into the rigging of "21?" In this day and age, with self-aggrandizing politicians and the amounts of money at stake, the NBA couldn't survive an investigation with a smoking gun pointing to dictated results and fraud upon fans.
Seriously, they mentioned that the Mavericks had pointed out Yao's moving screens, and if the league said "hey, watch Yao's moving screens" and the refs call Yao for a moving screen, how is that a bad thing?
Somebody in these playoffs, I can't remember who, carries the ball more than most people do as he's coming up the court. If his opponent told the league that he does it, and the league agrees, they are going to tell the officials to watch for it.
Van Gundy made it sound like something nefarious, and the league slammed him for it.
There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is when you use the media to point things out, you leave the league with a Hobson's choice: either look like they're responding to your whining (which then encourages more public complaining from the other side), or continue to let the illegal stuff go.
I'm positive Pop and the Spurs ask the league to watch certain things. They're just smart enough not to do it in the media.
Didn't Dirk make a living moving on screens he set for Nash Mark?
my 2 cents. Its odd that the fine was so big, it certainly adds fuel to the fire that reffing isn't fair. But I don't believe they are biased towards any teams. They just flat out suck. And this year seems demonstrably worse than previous years. They need to get better, and they need to stop anticipating calls. It's ruining the game.
Last edited by SilverPlayer; 05-02-2005 at 08:06 PM.
It's pretty pathetic considering what came out of Melo and Karl's mouths after game 3 that they aren't getting the same.
I don't even think they fined Karl and he flat out said the calls were bull . If that doesn't deserve a fine, I don't know what does.
Cuban is a little but his accusations have some merit to them, considering that T-Mac himself, admitted that he was able to score via Yao's moving screen.
Gimme a break. There isn't a team in the league that doesn't use moving screens, including your beloved _allas Mavericks.
Anyone who counters otherwise either isn't watching the games or doesn't know about basketball.
I'm watching Rockettes Mavs right now and Dirk just set a moving pick that wasn't called right as I pulled up this thread. He set a second one as I was typing this.
There are 20 moving picks every game.
Precisely my point.
Stern's comments last night sure made it sound as if the punishment was not necessarily for the comments, but for Van Gundy's apparent refusal to name his source. The comments alone were pretty pedestrian stuff -- implicating an NBA official as having disclosed the discussion of a conference call with the league's officials is, I think, what got Stern's gander up. I also suspect that Stern's going to try to smoke the source out somehow and will threaten Van Gundy with stricter and stricter punishments until the source is revealed. {ve have vays of making you talk . . . }
The Commissioner made his point... no one is going to spread lies and talk about the officiating.
RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Houston Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy, already fined a record $100,000 by the NBA, could be banned from the league if he continues to publicly criticize officials, commissioner David Stern said.
Screw you guys! Just wait until you're in your mid to late 30's damnit!
I would hope that most men in their mid 30s would still have their hair!!!Screw you guys! Just wait until you're in your mid to late 30's damnit!
But, then again most men in their mid 30s aren't stressed out by coaching the Rockets.
NBA officiating will continue to be poor until there is a neutral body that oversees the ref evaluation process. As long as refs police their own, there can never true quality and impartiality.
Period.
They'd survive. In this day and age, it's all about the money in D.C. and getting some lobbyist to buff some congressman's car. People in power never take out other positions of power; they take out the little people.In this day and age, with self-aggrandizing politicians and the amounts of money at stake, the NBA couldn't survive an investigation with a smoking gun pointing to dictated results and fraud upon fans.
That said, the massive amount of JVG's fine alone suggests he's gotten a little too close to the truth, or some kind of truth. And they need to shut him up. The threat of a lifetime ban is overreaching so far it isn't even funny. You can choke a coach or beat up a by-standing fan and come back the next year and if you suggest some odd practices instigated by the biggest crybaby owner in the league, you get tossed on your ear for life?
That, in my eyes, screams cover up.
Very good point! The reaction does not match the "crime".
http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/3588876
Van Gundy isn't problem ... refs are
Kevin Hench / FOXSports.com
Posted: 55 minutes ago
OK, David Stern, you made your point.
You don't want NBA coaches talking publicly about the terrible officiating in the NBA. You don't want NBA coaches protecting their sources on inside information about the terrible officiating in the NBA. You don't want hardworking, passionate, decent men coaching in the NBA if they are going to be so impolitic as to point out the terrible officiating in the NBA.
Now, do you have any plans to actually do anything about the terrible officiating in the NBA?
If Jeff Van Gundy can be fined $100,000 for suggesting that he was tipped off by an NBA ref that the league was going to be "looking harder at Yao" in the playoffs — which may very well be true — then what does Mr. Stern propose to do about the unconscionable sixth foul called on Tim Duncan in last night's overtime against Denver?
With two minutes gone in OT, Carmelo Anthony slipped and fell — in the same spot that Andre Miller slipped earlier, by the way — and so the whistle blew. Why? Because the whistle always blows. (Unless it absolutely should, in which case it is often swallowed.) And when the whistle blows, everything stops. And everyone looks at the official who only then realizes the gravity of the situation. He has to call SOMETHING.
In this case, the official, having assumed a foul must have been committed, then had to look for a perpetrator and found only Duncan in the vicinity. Sorry. You're gone. Replays showed what viewers and broadcasters suspected: Anthony slipped. So this ref not only blew a call at a critical moment of a critical game, but he tagged a superstar with his sixth foul.
So what will his fine be? How about five hundred bucks? Perhaps a one-game suspension? Don't hold your breath. Lucky for Stern and his beleaguered officials, the Spurs won going away in overtime in what TNT's Charles Barkley called "one of the worst-officiated games I've seen in my 20 years associated with the NBA."
But Van Gundy's Rockets weren't lucky enough to survive the worst call of the night. Or rather, the worst non-call, which — horror of horrors — happened with Commissioner Stern in attendance.
With Houston making a run to close within three in the final minute, Rockets guard Jon Barry secured a defensive rebound under the basket. Since Barry himself was practically on the baseline, it's safe to assume that any defender that swooped in under his left elbow would be out of bounds. So when Michael Finley reached in from the baseline side of Barry and poked the ball free, Bennett Salvatore, Joe DeRosa or Tony Brothers would have to blow his whistle, right?
Right?
Nope. Like the rest of us, Salvatore and company just looked on doing nothing as the ball bounced to Jerry Stackhouse, who was tripped by Barry and awarded two crucial free throws.
According to Van Gundy, Salvatore claimed Finley had indeed been inbounds when he reached in and touched the ball. Wow.
Won't Mr. Salvatore be surprised when he sees the replay. Was Finley's right foot inbounds and his left foot on the line? No. Was Finley's left foot out of bounds and his right foot on the line? No. Were both of Finley's feet completely freakin' out of bounds? YESSSSSSS!!!
So what will the sanctions be against Salvatore's crew for contributing mightily to the Rockets' 103-100 loss? The usual. Nothing.
Antoine Walker can get suspended for making contact with an official — in what had been the worst-officiated game of the playoffs prior to Spurs-Nuggets last night — and Van Gundy can be fined 100 large for divulging certain details of a private conversation and then not giving up his friend, but when will NBA officials be publicly held to account for doing a poor job?
Stern's answer seems to be to come down hard on the complainers and hope it will distract the fans from the larger problem. But he's missing the solution.
Replay. Replay, replay, replay, a thousand times replay!
If it's good enough to see if a shot was released in time or if a toe was on the line, why not to see if a player was inbounds when he made contact with the ball?
Both of Monday night's horrible calls could have been overturned by replay. Give coaches two challenges per game or per half, or one per game, but give them something. Anything to avoid officials deciding games. If throwing the red flag has already been taken, maybe they could roll a red-white-and-blue ball onto the court to signify a challenge.
Do you think Bennett Salvatore wants to feel like a jackass when he watches that replay and realizes not only did his crew blow the call but that he erroneously defended the non-call to the losing coach? Of course not.
On a play like Finley reaching in from out of bounds, a ref would happily overturn his own ruling and award the ball to the aggrieved team.
Same with those pesky block/charge calls when the refs are always guessing as to whether the defender's heels have cleared the circle under the basket. How many hundreds of times during the regular season does the replay reveal an official's error on this call? Sometimes the defender gets called for a block when his heels are hovering just above the circle, and sometimes the penetrator gets called for a charge when the defender's heels are on the line. It's an impossible call to make with any certainty when massive bodies are flying at high speeds.
So in the pressure cooker of the playoffs, let's just acknowledge that refs make mistakes that television cameras can rectify and use the technology to take some of the heat off the officials.
There's a reason so many calls are missed in the NBA — it's an almost impossible game to officiate. If you've ever been courtside when the combustible mixture of freakish giants and blazing sprinters (and freakish giant, blazing sprinters) all collide in pursuit of a rebound, you know it's simply impossible to have a perfect night as an NBA ref.
So why not help the refs, the coaches and the fans? NBA games don't run that long. There's time for a handful of challenges. Just to get the calls right.
Or you can threaten to run Jeff Van Gundy, one of the genuine good guys in the league, out of the game. It's your choice, David Stern.
Kevin Hench is supervising producer of The Sports List on Fox Sports Net.
I just read that Fox Sports article. Very wise, very good article. I agree - NBA basketball is so fast, so dynamic, that it's impossible for even three talented officials to see everything as it happens. Much less three untalented or over-the-hill officials, like they have nowadays. That's the reason for a lot of superstar calls, in my mind: refs simply can't get in position to see everything and so give a lot of calls to the established star over the scrub.
I see no large reasons why a replay system shouldn't be used. One problem is how fluid the game is - there's none of the starts and extended stops of football, the next play happens immediately - but there can be some solution found. Why not have a fourth 'referee' posted with a television to look at plays where the refs are uncertain about the outcome? There'd be none of that 'umps stare at each other in fear, realizing none of them saw what happened and thousands of fans are going to see it up on the Jumbotron in a few minutes' kinds of look.
But it looks like David Stern is intent on circling the wagons and protecting his little fiefdom.
Van Gundy ed up. Stern got pissed and there's your fine. Teams call the NBA all the time to complain about officials or calls, its common knowledge. It's been like that for years, you think teams haven't called the NBA to look at Shaq more closely in past playoffs? And the NBA has to listen to those complaints.
Plus the officials are always having meetings and talks about players and who to look closely and who not to. That's normal too. You think they haven't talked about Manu after Karl ed like a little girl?
Van Gundy ed up because he made it seem like a "conspiracy". Although I'm sure Cuban is the iest owner in the whole NBA, and probably has Stern's number in speed dial. I think the NBA is handling the officiating horribly and last night's Spurs game is proof.
Seeing this article gives me hope but makes me angry at the same time that Stern is so belligerent about protecting his blessed officials.
Here is a post I wrote back in March: link
Here are some of the highlights of the article above:Have you ever tried to get a friend to start watching the NBA? Usually the first comment out of their mouths is "I don't understand what a foul is." That's because from one game to the next - and even within the same game, what qualifies as a foul seems pretty subjective at times. The refs just aren't as good as they could be imo.
The glaring problem with NBA refs is that they are allowed to police their own. They are supposed to review and reprimand any underperforming refs with the ultimate authority being the director of officials - himself a referee.
This. Never. Works. Any psychology undergrad will tell you that people cannot be trusted to police themselves because they always have their own best interests at heart. Nobody wants to fire one of their own for incompetence. It's the reason that any investigation in police misconduct for example is invetigated by the department of internal affairs - a separate and presumably more neutral third party organization.
I think the NBA could do two things to improve the quality of its refs:
1) Create a neutral third party to review referee performance and hire/fire refs.
2) Change the rules such that each coach could challenge a call once per half. I don't think this would have an adverse effect in terms of slowing down the game. You could even remove one full and/or one 20sec timeout from the current allotment to compensate as I think they're too many timeouts in games anyway.
How many times have we seen a blown call on a big screen instant replay with no repercussion for the ref? Too many times for my liking. With a challenge system like in football, the ref could get immediate feedback on his error and it would be very public as to just how good a particular ref is over time. The penalty for an erroneous challenge could be something like 2fts and loss of possession. I don't think one challenge per half would be detrimental to the speed of the game.
Antoine Walker can get suspended for making contact with an official — in what had been the worst-officiated game of the playoffs prior to Spurs-Nuggets last night — and Van Gundy can be fined 100 large for divulging certain details of a private conversation and then not giving up his friend, but when will NBA officials be publicly held to account for doing a poor job?
Stern's answer seems to be to come down hard on the complainers and hope it will distract the fans from the larger problem. But he's missing the solution.
Replay. Replay, replay, replay, a thousand times replay!
If it's good enough to see if a shot was released in time or if a toe was on the line, why not to see if a player was inbounds when he made contact with the ball?
Both of Monday night's horrible calls could have been overturned by replay. Give coaches two challenges per game or per half, or one per game, but give them something. Anything to avoid officials deciding games. If throwing the red flag has already been taken, maybe they could roll a red-white-and-blue ball onto the court to signify a challenge.
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