In an unprecedented NBA season marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the league’s nagging issues has jumped to the forefront of league dialogue: bad officiating. With reduced fan capacities across arenas, referees can hear more fan chatter than ever. Shocking ejections mixed with unrelenting, petty technical fouls have ruined marquee matchups and infuriated fans and players.
Some of the league’s best players have vocalized their distaste of the officiating. On April 5, after a missed foul on Orlando center Wendell Carter Jr., MVP frontrunner Nikola Jokić whacked Carter’s teammate, Terrence Ross, directly in front of a referee to get his attention. Jokić’s demeanor was so aggressive that the referee flinched in fear of Jokić as he stared him down. Just three days later, Jokić’s coach, Michael Malone, was ejected from the Denver Nuggets’ game against the San Antonio Spurs following a play in which he felt Jokić deserved a foul call. Malone exited the court red in the face after verbally accosting officials from the bench to the locker room.
The Nuggets are not alone in their frustration. Utah Jazz stars Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell made headlines for ripping officials in early March after they felt the officials, in Mitchell’s words, “took” the game from them. Mitchell and Gobert were both fined by the NBA for their comments.
Poor officiating is ruining the league’s product. On Saturday night, the Los Angeles Lakers took on the Brooklyn Nets for a high-profile game between perhaps the two most star-studded rosters in the league. Unfortunately, injuries limited the number of stars on the floor with LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and James Harden all sidelined with injuries, and Kevin Durant on a minutes restriction. With all of the injuries, Nets’ guard Kyrie Irving was the best player on the floor. Unfortunately, fans only got to see little of Irving, as he was ejected in the third quarter due to a verbal altercation with Lakers guard Dennis Schröder.
NBA ads typically feature the game’s two best players side-by-side, often with little to no mention of the teams they are on, as the league believes that fans will tune in to watch individual players rather than teams. So when players like Irving, Jokić, Mitchell and others are constantly taken out of games due to foul trouble or ejections, it is a huge problem for the league since fans only tune in to games to watch these stars compete.
Furthermore, the NBA currently punishes harmless and fun extracurriculars by its players. The league will assess technical fouls for players who even loosely taunt one another. What about that needs to be discouraged? That is fun, competitive basketball. Everyone loves highlights of Shawn Kemp pointing at Alton Lister, Allen Iverson stepping over Tyronn Lue or LeBron staring down Jason Terry; they are some of the most memorable moments in league history.
Rather than encouraging these electric highlights, the league punishes its players for so much as bouncing a basketball. In fact, Boston Celtics star forward Jayson Tatum received a technical for just that the other day.
With the playoffs on the horizon, the NBA would be wise to resolve this problem now lest bad officiating occur in a playoff game. The most practical step the league can take is to raise the criterion for a technical foul and discourage its officials from calling them so frequently. Officials should avoid calling technicals for inter-player trash talk unless it reaches a much higher level than that of Irving and Schröder.
Everyone wants to witness an epic staredown or taunt following a poster dunk. The last thing anyone would want is to see a pivotal player ejected from a playoff game for chirping their opponents.
Austin Barish is a sophomore in the College. The Armchair Analyst appears online every other week.
Tom • Apr 16, 2021 at 2:42 pm
Before anyone attacks referees of any sport they should strap on a whistle and step onto the court or field.
In the NBA you have extremely athletic huge men moving at high speed in a very emotional game. I have officiated many games at lower levels then the nba and trash talking and stare downs lead to fights. If this is not addressed the star players miss more then half a game. Maybe 4 games while they heal from a broken jaw or never make it back.
Dont understand how everyone allows players to miss shots but not referees to miss a call or two during a game. Arn’t we all human?
I see a lot of these types of articles but no one takes the time really see what it takes to do this job. One sided reporting, not cool.
Kristopher • May 1, 2021 at 11:04 pm
I disagree, I’ve watched officiating in sports ever since I could pick up a basket ball, and some of the nonsense that nba referees get away with is absolutely unacceptable. If I tun into a Trail blazers VS. Jazz game, I wanna watch carmelo, Dame, and C.J. If one of the biased/P.O.S. refs decide that dame’s taking “Aggravating” Shots from 30+ out amd slap him with a tech, That would make even the most calm person want to crack the ref upside the jaw.
Trev • Jul 21, 2021 at 12:51 am
Ridiculous. All sport officiating will be flawed to a certain extent because we’re dealing with the human element. If one or two bad calls a game was all we were dealing with, that would be one thing. But it isn’t. It’s consistently bad calls made all game long in a sport where a third of the game is played at the foul line. It gets worse the further you go into the playoffs. Generally you’ll see the officials call games even for both sides, but anyone will tell you how bad calls at critical times in the game can significantly tip the scales. My primary issue is when they don’t call the game the same for both teams. Allowing one team or certain players to play the game one way while handicapping other teams or players. Unbalanced officiating can literally change the way a team plays the game and can actually make them stop playing defense or stunt their offense. There is no other sport I can think of where the officials have a larger impact on the outcome of a contest than in basketball. Personally I find many of the rules stupid and entirely subjective and I believe that also plays a large part in officials either missing calls or officials perceiving infractions differently than say, the fans. I think the NBA needs to clean up the game, the way it’s played, tweak some rules, and tighten up on officials. I can’t sit through a single game without complaining at the constant traveling, double dribbling, aggressive contact for one person is acceptable but the same contact from another person is a foul … it’s rampant to the point that an official could probably just call whatever he wants whenever he wants. Maybe just change the game entirely where even breathing on someone is a foul and you just play the entire game taking turns shooting from the foul line and whichever jersey color the official likes best wins?