Can we just take a moment to talk about the shameless referee worship that is happening on every broadcast in the playoffs.
Every game one of those league shills doing the commentary is talking about how lucky we are to have the best referees, identifying each by name and lauding how terrific they all are.
While it's quite apparent that all/most of these refs are complete garbage.
Outside of last night's Sox game, I think the NBA has the worst refs in the four major sports.
I mean, how much of it is part of the game, though? I complain a lot about ref incompetency, but I'm honestly not sure if it's a personnel thing or just because refs are so much more involved and influential in basketball than any other sport. At least with fouls, I think they just need to let them play a lot more, because then there's less issue with interpretation than you have now.
But I think it definitely has been corrupted, in a sense. Not throwing games corrupted, but choosing when, where, and who to call the whistle on - heavy star favoritism, major inconsistency among officiating units (even in single games), etc.
