OT: NBA season has begun! [Potential Spoilers]

[MattTuck]

Is it still considered a foul if you have the ball, pump fake, get the defender to jump up, and then you jump into them (causing contact, as opposed to the defender causing contact) as you make a half-hearted attempt to heave the ball in the general direction of the basket?

I actually enjoy watching basketball, and appreciate the athleticism and team work, but man... it really irks me when I see an obvious travel that is not called, or other calls/no calls that just undermine my enjoyment of the game.

I'm a big equal application of the rules kind of guy, and I find myself flipping the channel after I see a few of these calls.

[bobswire]

Originally Posted by FlashUNC

He can move under the rules. He was in a legal guarding position and they called it a charge in real time. The fact this was reversed under slow-mo replay is the ultimate in home cooking.

Last night's crew needs to be shot into the sun.

The play was reviewed by the NBA and sided with the refs as being a correct call, your bias is not reviewable.
https://twitter.com/NBAOfficial/stat...05076575707137

[longlist]

They won't suspend kevin love or jr smith. watch. they won't do it cause everyone will go ballistic. the media and fans will go insane over it. smith absolutely deserves to be suspended for what he did. and it wasn't just draymond green clapping and saying stuff. when they showed the reply, steph, klay and someone else were clapping and mouthing off. the slide tackle of klay thompson shouldn't have happened. not from an elite veteran like smith. the lebron foul, subjective. he kept sliding over. he wasn't stationary. i think it was a foul on lebron based on that. but again i am not a ref. what do i know.

[joosttx]

Originally Posted by bobswire

The play was reviewed by the NBA and sided with the refs as being a correct call, your bias is not reviewable.
https://twitter.com/NBAOfficial/stat...05076575707137

Is there an explanation. It looked like a charge to me.

[FlashUNC]

Originally Posted by bobswire

The play was reviewed by the NBA and sided with the refs as being a correct call, your bias is not reviewable.
https://twitter.com/NBAOfficial/stat...05076575707137

What a shock the NBA would cover for their crew. You think they'd seriously announce they screwed up the call? There'd be riots in Cleveland.

Steve Javie -- ABC's official guy and someone who spent three decades in the league -- thought the charge was the correct call. At full speed it looked pretty clearly like a charge with Durant out of control to the bucket.

Blocks and charges are always going to be 50/50 calls, but being able to review and reverse on replay for something like positioning beyond whether or not someone is in the restricted area invites this kind of nonsense.

Either way, last night looks awful for those refs. Either they can't call a block/charge correctly in real time -- which is their job -- and need replay to get it right (calling into question every call they make over the prior 46 minutes), or got the replay wrong, which means they suck at replay review. Which is it?

As JVG noted during the broadcast, this is the Finals. You don't have the luxury of missing a call here or there, especially in high leverage moments like that.

[FlashUNC]

Originally Posted by jtakeda

I thought that in the new nba rules all plays in the final 2 Minutes were reviewable to get the call right.

It’s not like football where you can only review the part of the play that’s being challenged. They nba refs can review to make sure they got everything right (ie. fix shot clock, game clock, review if it’s a 2 or 3, block or charge) all during one video review.

Now regarding Lebron, it’s also my understanding that Lebron has to be in legal guarding position at the moment the shooter begins the shooting motion. I’d say when KD goes for the lay up Lebron is still a little to the side and slides in and moves his shoulder hence the charge call.

Lastly let’s not forget this is a home game for the warriors. Had it been an away game I think the call would’ve gone the other way. The refs are human and are likely affected by the environment.

In any case https://youtu.be/dToIxgPHuJE
It’s the season

Only things reviewable in the final 2 minutes are blocks/charges, positioning around the 3 point line to see whether a made basket is a 3 or two, and out of bounds possession.

The only foul that can be reversed on review is a block/charge. Which is bonkers.

[Jaybee]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

Is it still considered a foul if you have the ball, pump fake, get the defender to jump up, and then you jump into them (causing contact, as opposed to the defender causing contact) as you make a half-hearted attempt to heave the ball in the general direction of the basket?

I actually enjoy watching basketball, and appreciate the athleticism and team work, but man... it really irks me when I see an obvious travel that is not called, or other calls/no calls that just undermine my enjoyment of the game.

I'm a big equal application of the rules kind of guy, and I find myself flipping the channel after I see a few of these calls.

It's my partially informed (intramural ref in college, did a few middle school games) opinion that basketball is the hardest of all the major North American sports to referee fairly. It only gets harder as the level of play increases. At the pinnacle of the sport, you have 10 insanely fast, insanely large humans running around in a few hundred square feet at a time. Three guys are supposed to watch for multiple types of violations on and off the ball and keep the game and tempers under control, which only becomes harder as the stakes increase. Refs are people too, and they are going to make mistakes.

The refs doing last night's game (and whoever you see doing the remaining games) are pretty much the best on the planet at officiating basketball. They've been scouted, selected, progressed through the system and spend tons of time training, reviewing, getting better. Unlike the NFL, these guys don't have other jobs. We can fire last night's crew into the sun, but then we are going to have some G-League schlubs doing game 3.

Personally, I'd like to see replay review go away in every sport everywhere. Part of the joy of sport is the human element. What can a human referee process in real time? I'm struggling to think of a great sports moment that an objective observer would say was made better by replay. Now we have frame by frame breakdowns to determine block/charge, interminable rules about catching a football, robots critiquing balls and strikes.

Let sports be human and free!

[FlashUNC]

Originally Posted by Jaybee

It's my partially informed (intramural ref in college, did a few middle school games) opinion that basketball is the hardest of all the major North American sports to referee fairly. It only gets harder as the level of play increases. At the pinnacle of the sport, you have 10 insanely fast, insanely large humans running around in a few hundred square feet at a time. Three guys are supposed to watch for multiple types of violations on and off the ball and keep the game and tempers under control, which only becomes harder as the stakes increase. Refs are people too, and they are going to make mistakes.

The refs doing last night's game (and whoever you see doing the remaining games) are pretty much the best on the planet at officiating basketball. They've been scouted, selected, progressed through the system and spend tons of time training, reviewing, getting better. Unlike the NFL, these guys don't have other jobs. We can fire last night's crew into the sun, but then we are going to have some G-League schlubs doing game 3.

Personally, I'd like to see replay review go away in every sport everywhere. Part of the joy of sport is the human element. What can a human referee process in real time? I'm struggling to think of a great sports moment that an objective observer would say was made better by replay. Now we have frame by frame breakdowns to determine block/charge, interminable rules about catching a football, robots critiquing balls and strikes.

Let sports be human and free!

Three refs ain't enough for a crew to see everything. Its why Brothers called the flagrant 2 on Thompson. His angle was atrocious.

The MLB adds umpires to the regular crew for the World Series because its important to get those calls right. I'm not sure why the NBA doesn't do the same and add a fourth pair of eyes and legs to the crew for the playoffs.

[Jaybee]

Originally Posted by FlashUNC

Three refs ain't enough for a crew to see everything. Its why Brothers called the flagrant 2 on Thompson. His angle was atrocious.

The MLB adds umpires to the regular crew for the World Series because its important to get those calls right. I'm not sure why the NBA doesn't do the same and add a fourth pair of eyes and legs to the crew for the playoffs.

This is possibly a workable scenario, but I wouldn't start just in the playoffs. A big part of refereeing is the interplay between the on-ball official, the side official and the back official and those responsibilities change on a second to second basis as the ball moves around the court. This is why you see the refs raise their hands sometimes, to say, I got this call and avoid toe-stepping. Good crews do it seamlessly and you don't notice.

I wouldn't want to introduce that new dynamic in the playoffs, but for a league where even the worst small market teams are valued over $1B? Yeah, just get a fourth official in there from the get-go.

(I want to say they may have tried this in some summer league or G-league games, not sure of outcome.)

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by MattTuck

Is it still considered a foul if you have the ball, pump fake, get the defender to jump up, and then you jump into them (causing contact, as opposed to the defender causing contact) as you make a half-hearted attempt to heave the ball in the general direction of the basket?

"Asking for a friend."

[saab2000]

I am really pulling for the Cavs. I love LeBron James for many reasons and now there's another reason: his suit with shorts. When you're a 3-time NBA champ and an 8-time consecutive NBA Finalist you can do pretty much whatever you want, including a large man purse.

Not everyone can rock this, but LBJ does.

[chiasticon]

Originally Posted by Bob Ross

"Asking for a friend."

lol. Curry tried that move last night. except G Hill didn't jump so it was just Curry head-butting him. Celtics got away with it twice in game seven and I was losing my mind. it's a cheap move IMHO.

[jtakeda]

Originally Posted by saab2000

I am really pulling for the Cavs. I love LeBron James for many reasons and now there's another reason: his suit with shorts. When you're a 3-time NBA champ and an 8-time consecutive NBA Finalist you can do pretty much whatever you want, including a large man purse.

Not everyone can rock this, but LBJ does.

Lebron is going ac/dc on us. TNT. Dynamite. No doubt.

[notsew]

Originally Posted by Jaybee

The things no one is talking about:

80% FT shooter George Hill missing one that would have almost certainly won the game for his team.

KD not boxing out JR.

Cleveland not calling a timeout when it became clear that JR was confused (happened pretty fast, though).

This was Cleveland's "win", and I think they'll probably get swept now. Especially if TT is suspended (probably should be) and double especially if Love is suspended.

I can't blame Hill for missing that shot. That's a big mental hill to climb, when they zoomed in on his face after the first one sank you could tell he wasn't making the second. He looked like he wanted to crawl under a rock.

[cadence90]

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