Kyrie Calls out the Refs...Finally!

[gouki88]

To me, the worst part was listening to Hubie Brown who will never disagree with a foul called.  Can't stand the guy, even if the Celtics are winning.  "Now, right there, you can't do that.  You can't be in front of him like that."  "Yeah, you see that, you see he's outside the circle (as Giannis' foot is partially in the circle) so that's a charge."  I ended up muting the game, which I do far too often for Hubie.

Second worst part of the officiating was that they'd blow the whistle way too long after the event.  As soon as Giannis (or anyone on the Bucs) missed in the 3rd quarter and the celtics got the rebound, *Beep* bring it back!

Hubie is cringe-worthy beyond belief. There's a reason most people aren't working at 85, and his consistent displays of being out of touch and borderline delusional are perfect examples

[johnnygreen]

To me, the worst part was listening to Hubie Brown who will never disagree with a foul called.  Can't stand the guy, even if the Celtics are winning.  "Now, right there, you can't do that.  You can't be in front of him like that."  "Yeah, you see that, you see he's outside the circle (as Giannis' foot is partially in the circle) so that's a charge."  I ended up muting the game, which I do far too often for Hubie.

Second worst part of the officiating was that they'd blow the whistle way too long after the event.  As soon as Giannis (or anyone on the Bucs) missed in the 3rd quarter and the celtics got the rebound, *Beep* bring it back!

There was the laughable foul on Jaylen Brown against  Bledsoe, after Coach Budenholzer told the referee to call a foul. However, there was an almost equally bad of a call on the play before it on the offensive charge. Hubie Brown says it was a clear offensive foul. Then they show a different angle of the replay, and Jaylen would have avoided the contact, but Bledsoe leaned so far to his left to get hit, that he lifted his right foot. How the referee didn’t see that is beyond me.

[johnnygreen]

Conspiracy theory alert!

The league has heard the Kyrie rumors of him possibly leaving, if the Celtics don’t perform well and at least make it out of the second round. One of those free agent destinations is the NY Knicks. Could this be a possible reason as to why the foul calls have felt so one sided?

[Silky]

The agenda here is all about the nba wanting what they view as the young and up and coming teams, along with their prechosen lebron replacement meeting in the semi's and going to the finals.

Philly and Bucks will continue to get tremendous preferential treatment from the refs and it will continue to happen for the foreseeable future.

The league doesnt care about the celtics, and will continue not caring.

team has to overcome terrible officiating and a talented team.

[Rosco917]

The truth is NBA viewership is plummeting. I feel many fans are growing weary with the poor quality and the tainted inaccuracy of the officiating. Replays show where fouls are being called and in reality, no contact was ever made! Each game is full of momentum-changing inaccurate calls. It's obvious that the refs have favorites and are being influenced by them. The league wants certain superstars in playoff games for the sake of mass viewership, no matter the loss in the integrity of the game.

Giannis travels in the paint often. Just watch the plays in slow-mo. He changes pivot feet, stutter-steps with both feet all the time. It's obvious that they don't want the rules of the game interfering with the excitement of a superstar in action. He uses his off hand as a straight arm clearing the way. Lebron does it all the time too and never is offensive interference called.   

The casual fan wants spectacular offensive displays, like in the all-star game. To hell with defense, chemistry, and team play.

     

[Ogaju]

I am glad people are now talking about the off hand checking by the stars, Almost all of them do it. I stopped complaining because I thought it came to believe that it is actually a legal play. Kobe did this all the time, and so did Jordan.

[johnnygreen]

Giannis has another clear out move. When he has both hands on the ball, he uses the part of his arm between his shoulder and elbow, to hook his defender and gain an advantage to the rim.

[angryguy77]

The truth is NBA viewership is plummeting. I feel many fans are growing weary with the poor quality and the tainted inaccuracy of the officiating. Replays show where fouls are being called and in reality, no contact was ever made! Each game is full of momentum-changing inaccurate calls. It's obvious that the refs have favorites and are being influenced by them. The league wants certain superstars in playoff games for the sake of mass viewership, no matter the loss in the integrity of the game.

Giannis travels in the paint often. Just watch the plays in slow-mo. He changes pivot feet, stutter-steps with both feet all the time. It's obvious that they don't want the rules of the game interfering with the excitement of a superstar in action. He uses his off hand as a straight arm clearing the way. Lebron does it all the time too and never is offensive interference called.   

The casual fan wants spectacular offensive displays, like in the all-star game. To hell with defense, chemistry, and team play.

   

I've heard this from so many people over the years. They don't give much attention to the NBA because of the special treatment shown to stars.

I've maintained for a long time that one of the main reasons the NFL grew to be so big was due to parity and it being more of a team sport. There's a bigger chance for an upset to happen in the nfl than there is in the nba. If the nba had more parity, I believe it would become much more popular.

Now how do you inject parity into a league that is driven by superstars? You call the games even. Sure the team with the better player will still have an advantage, but that advantage won't be amplified and made bigger than it should be. The product overall would be better.

Sadly the NBA will never change. It's going to take another Donaghy scandle or 2 before any change will happen, and even then I'm not so sure.

[RockinRyA]

Just looked up the free throws for the first 3 games.

Kyrie is 11-12, while the Celtics as a whole are 59-67.
Giannis is 34-50, while the Bucks as a whole are 64-91.

So that is 38 more attempts for Giannis over Kyrie.

Speaking of the ridiculously referred game 3, I was very curious of where that stood in particular. The Celtics were 30-32, while the Bucks were 24-36. This is a clear case of where stats don’t tell the whole story. With 7:20 remaining in the game, the score was 106-91 when Gordon Hayward went to the free throw line. The Celtics would take 16 free throws the rest of the game, which was half of their total for the game.

Yep. Officials clearly trying to make the numbers look even once the outcome had been determined

yes ive said it before. Some idiot in the other thread.mentioned the foul counts not taking into acct that most of them were after the game was already decided. The refs influenced the gane with bad calls and then make it up later so its not too obvious.

[Green Bones]

I'm not one to usually complain about the refs, but that 3rd quarter was atrocious. Totally sucked the flow out of the game. The amount of calls Giannis was getting was cringe worthy, literally every time he missed a shot it had to be a foul. While the C's got hammered on quite a few plays, or possible and 1's that were never called. I think we finally drew a charge during that run, but it was so glaringly one-sided.

I'm hoping Smart's return gives us that extra boost tonight to even things. They need to pull out all the stops tonight.

[mmmmm]

The truth is NBA viewership is plummeting. I feel many fans are growing weary with the poor quality and the tainted inaccuracy of the officiating. Replays show where fouls are being called and in reality, no contact was ever made! Each game is full of momentum-changing inaccurate calls. It's obvious that the refs have favorites and are being influenced by them. The league wants certain superstars in playoff games for the sake of mass viewership, no matter the loss in the integrity of the game.

Well, sorta-kinda-probably-not.

Regular season local ratings were down slightly due to big dips in a couple of the NBAs biggest markets -- NYK and CHI -- due to those teams sucking awful.   Cleveland also saw a dip in ratings with the departure of Lebron.

Conversely, of course, LAL saw an increase in ratings with the arrival of Lebron -- highest ratings since 2013.

Many teams actually saw increases in local ratings but nationally, the statistical weight of the big markets up above dragged the national rating down.

https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2019/04/29/Media/NBA-ratings.aspx

That was regular season and those are local-broadcast ratings.   

Moving to the playoffs so far, ratings on nationally broadcast games are clearly up signficantly over last year:

ESPN and ABC’s coverage of the 2019 NBA Conference Semifinals is up 19 percent from last season in metered market ratings, according to Nielsen. Through five games, ESPN and ABC are averaging a 3.8 metered market rating.

https://deadline.com/2019/05/espn-abc-nba-conference-semifinals-ratings-up-19-percent-1202607441/

I think overall, viewership isn't plummeting.

I don't disagree at all with your criticism of how the quality of the officiating ruins the product, though.  My sig says it all.