The NBA's officiating crisis worsens

An egregious no-call to end Pistons vs. Knicks is the latest example.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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This is how basketball games end in hell.

About 30 seconds left in Madison Square Garden, with the Pistons leading the Knicks by one. Jalen Brunson misses a three, setting off a mad scramble for the rebound. Quentin Grimes (now a Piston) gets it and saves it to Simone Fontecchio, who gets bumped by Josh Hart and loses the ball, picked up by Isaiah Hartenstein, who kicks it to Donte DiVincenzo, who makes a bad pass to Brunson that’s nearly intercepted by Ausar Thompson, who instead tries to gain control of it down the sideline when DiVincenzo basically tackles him, letting Brunson pick up the ball and dribble-drive for a pass to Hart under the basket, where he gets and-1 for the lead with 2.2 seconds left.

Remember a few weeks ago when the Knicks got totally jobbed out of a win by a terrible call on Brunson against the Rockets? One where the refs had to admit after the call — not the next day, but immediately after the game — that it was a bad call? One where the Knicks leaked that they were going to protest and everyone supported their decision despite knowing there was no way the protest would be upheld?

This one is somehow worse.

From the postgame pool report with the crew chief:

QUESTION: Why was a foul not called when Donte DiVincenzo made contact with Ausar Thompson near halfcourt with approximately eight seconds to go in the game?

WILLIAMS: Upon postgame review, we determined that Thompson gets to the ball first, and then was deprived of the opportunity to gain possession of the ball.  Therefore, a loose ball foul should have been whistled on New York’s Donte DiVincenzo.

The NBA has added instant replay elements to the game over the last several years, including coach’s challenges and a whole damn staffed replay center in New Jersey to help a) ensure games are officiated as cleanly as possible and b) keep the pace of the game up. That makes disasters like this more egregious, because somehow the NBA hasn’t solved the problem of “what happens when your refs blow a call that directly leads to a loss.” Basically in these instances, nothing happens! The refs can know they blew the call within minutes, and can’t fix it. In many cases, these types of calls are not challengable, or the coach doesn’t have a challenge remaining.

The 8-win Pistons got screwed here, and it shouldn’t have a material impact on the season. But this is going to happen in a playoff game, or a far more consequential regular season game, at some point. A single easy-to-adjudicate but impossible-to-unwind blown call is going to happen, and it could cost a team a playoff game or series, and it’s going to be the biggest story in sports.

This is just one element of the burgeoning officiating crisis in the NBA.

The extreme fuzziness around what type of behavior around disputing calls by players is allowed is another. Devin Booker was ejected for this two weeks ago.

A couple months ago, Nikola Jokic got ejected for this.

That was a few weeks after Jokic got ejected for this.

In both cases, you had the broadcast crew of the opponents bemoaning the ejection of Jokic, despite it exponentially increasing the odds of the home team winning.

At a time when the NBA is setting policies to force stars into playing more games, refs are ejecting stars for seemingly mild (if still annoying) complaints. This is self-sabotage for the league.

Add in that every game is available to almost every fan in high definition, and there is better access to individual clips from games than ever before, and that the league will tell you every day that officiating has never been more transparent with last-two-minute reports and the replay center and their own proprietary data and coaches’ challenges, and that game officials have the hardest job in the league, and … it’s a crisis. Fans and the media appear to have low levels of confidence in the refs. The league’s efforts to fix it have somehow made it worse by trying to embue an impossible task with more uncertainty.

I don’t have the answers, but the league should at least set some priorities around fixing the problem.

1. Retrain refs on what deserves a technical foul or instant ejection for arguing. Application is totally inconsistent and far too strict in certain cases. There needs to be uniformity here. Fans should never be in position to learn the emotional tendencies of certain refs. To reiterate this point, the crew chief should have get on the mic and announce to the crowd specifically why the player was ejected. “He looked at my man funny” will not fly.

2. Find a way to allow the replay center to interject in endgame situations only. They are sitting in there watching these games closely already. They can tell if there is a miscarriage of justice happening. Hit a button to queue up a red light or a booming voice in the arena that says, “Hold up, let’s review that.” Set this to the final minute only, have the in-arena refs work with the replay center on the monitors. Do the inevitable mea culpa before the players leave the court, not immediately after when it can’t be fixed.

3. Acknowledge fallibility elsewhere in the game. Perhaps the NBA should abolish the challenge system and declare that for 47 minutes, the refs are going to do their best to officiate a clean game, and in the final minute the replay center will jump in for any close calls.

4. Convince Scott Foster to retire. Seriously, no fan should know anything about individual refs. Between his relationship with Tim Donaghy to his Chris Paul feud to that Jack Harlow clip, there’s just far too much Scott Foster in the ether. Please stop.

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A Schooner Is A Sailboat, Stupidhead

The Clippers have rebranded. Instead of a nestling doll of boring letters inside of a basketball, the team is now represented by a boat.

Zach Lowe has the deep dive with all the details on jerseys, the court at the new arena and the fact that Steve Ballmer considered changing the name of the team until it became clear that fans strongly opposed doing so.

My take is that doing something distinct and specific with your brandmark and iconography is smart. Too many NBA team brands — including the current Clippers visual identity — are super generic and irrelevant to the market, the team names or any other piece of the identity of the team. I think of the Thunder’s visual identity, which has nothing to do with thunder, Oklahoma City or basketball. These teams spend a ton of energy on their alternate jerseys and courts but could really stand to address their core brands. Glad the Clippers took the plunge.

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Scores

Raptors 130, Pacers 122 — The Raptors earned their long-awaited pizza party by winning three straight!

Since it happened against recent Raptor Pascal Siakam … can he get an invite?

(But seriously, Toronto has won three straight and is just 3.5 games behind an Atlanta team that is going to be without Trae Young for a month and Onyeka Okongwu for some amount of time. Can the Raptors get into the play-in? Scottie Barnes is playing better than he has all season … and he was an All-Star.)

Pistons 111, Knicks 113

Nets 111, Grizzlies 86 — Brooklyn gets on the board in the Kevin Ollie era!

Heat 121, Kings 110 — When the NBA announced Jimmy Butler would be suspended for Monday’s game, and the Kings beat the Clippers in L.A. Sunday night, it was written in the stars that Sacramento would lose to Miami. This is who the Kings are: capable of beating anyone (except the Pelicans), capable of losing to anyone.

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Schedule

Eleven games on a Tuesday. All times Eastern.

Mavericks at Cavaliers, 7
Nets at Magic, 7
Warriors at Wizards, 7
Jazz at Hawks, 7:30
Sixers at Celtics, 7:30, TNT
Pelicans at Knicks, 7:30
Spurs at Timberwolves, 8
Pistons at Bulls, 8
Hornets at Bucks, 8
Rockets at Thunder, 10, TNT
Heat at Blazers, 10

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Be excellent to each other.