Washington Huskies
  • 11 months ago
SI addresses the NBA's officiating problem.
Transcript
00:00 The Raptors were not happy with the refs.
00:02 You know, the NBA has an officiating crisis in a sense, Dakota.
00:05 But to me, it's not about this disparity that the Lakers had in free throws
00:09 against Toronto.
00:11 For me, it's more about how perimeter defense, in a sense,
00:13 has been legislated out of the game, where, you know, if you're a jump shooter,
00:18 you're protected.
00:19 You know, if you flail for fouls, you get the calls.
00:21 But if you drive to the basket,
00:23 you don't necessarily get the benefit of the whistle,
00:25 because some of these calls the Raptors were complaining for,
00:28 if you got them, LeBron James would never leave the free throw line.
00:32 Yeah, I do think the league has an officiating problem,
00:36 but it's been had an officiating problem.
00:37 You clearly tell that the league wants to promote offense and scoring
00:42 as much as it can.
00:43 So you can see that the discrepancy obviously benefits
00:46 the offensive side of the ball.
00:48 To me, the funny thing about the LeBron complaining is,
00:52 well, saying that they didn't, there was a, they weren't fouling,
00:56 is that you were just complaining about the refs, like, literally 48 hours ago, bro.
01:00 So it's just like, you can't have it both ways.
01:02 I feel like, I feel like, to your point,
01:05 you can't really defend on the perimeter.
01:07 And then if you're flailing, then they have a built-in excuse
01:11 to just blow the whistle, which to me is messed up.
01:13 Like, that's not a, that should not be a part of the game.
01:15 And it's just almost universally been adopted that if I flail,
01:19 I'm going to get the whistle. That's messed up.
01:20 Well, it's impossible to play defense, but the way guys can shoot nowadays
01:24 from as far away as they can shoot,
01:26 if you can't get up in their grill or else it's going to be a call.
01:28 And if they initiate the contact and just do this, they get the call.
01:32 How are you supposed to defend them?
01:33 There have been controversies about one team getting more free throws
01:36 than another, going back to, you know, the Kings and the Lakers
01:39 in the Western Conference playoffs way back when.
01:42 So that's just going to happen.
01:44 Refs are going to miss calls.
01:45 To me, the bigger issue is an existential,
01:48 you know, overarching thing rather than what happened to the referee.
01:52 Yeah, no, I agree.
01:54 I feel like it's a built in.
01:57 The discrepancy isn't so much on the human element as it is the way
02:02 that the game is dictating how it's supposed to be officiated.
02:05 And I feel like unless that gets resolved,
02:08 you're not going to see any changes.