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.