Some of those calls last night were complete bs and definitely benefited the no good clippers! Especially the female ref...
It was really solid. Best officials of any major league sport. You can tell they really strive to be the greatest and the association holds them to the very highest of standards.
I would have to take the day off to pay attention to this thread cause I could complain for three pages by myself. Don't even get me started!!!
Solid take. It may be early in the season but the officials were on their game last night. I loved how they didn't fall for any of the flopping or whining from the Clippers. I hardly even noticed them which is good, let the players decide the outcome. It's probably not realistic to expect that level of officiating all season but at least for a night they represented the NBA well.
The officiating in that game was at times amazingly bad. Stunningly bad. Horrifically bad. Not the worst overall officiated game I've ever seen, by any means, but certainly one of the worst officiating crews. It wasn't like some of the crooked officiating crews we've all seen before, that were just wall to wall unethical. They were just incompetent. Especially the female ref. Can we trade her for Violet Palmer? (Shudder)
That last call on Napier was the cherry on top. Funny how they called 27-28 fouls the first half then zero for the first six minutes of the second.
It was one of the worst officiating I have seen since I began watching the NBA seriousy (which is only 5 years or so, but still)
It is very frustrating when the officials are allowed to control the game. Their job is to balance the game, keep it fair, not to dictate the outcome. After the third quarter the Blazers and Clippers were tied. In the fourth quarter, the Clippers took half of their total free throws. 23/46. The refs were making horrible calls, and calling them in force, slowing the tempo, stalling the Blazers engine, and not allowing it to get going again for the rest of the game. They called a couple of fake makeup calls, to make things look more kosher, but I assure you it was far from it. I don't understand why the NBA allows this. It is a mockery of the sport of basketball. The pursuit of ratings has become more important than an honest game. Adam Silver should be ashamed of himself.
The flagrant on Plumlee was utterly disgraceful. He absolutely gave him a little shove in the back, but Blake flopped like he had been shot. The refs didn't call the foul on the court, and since you can't retroactively call a regular foul after watching the replay, they instead called a flagrant, which was completely ridiculous. There was hardly any contact. Flagrant fouls are supposed to be reserved for truly dangerous fouls that could potentially injure someone. This was not the case at all, and the only reason why Griffin could have been injured was because of his own doing. He flopped. It was obvious that he flopped. They never should have made that call, and it killed our momentum. We were only down 3 points at that time.
Think of this as part of a "story arc". At this stage of the story the Hero has to experience adversity and the Heel has to be established as truly loathsome. This will all play out over the course of the season.
I thought Jordan should have been ejected during the third quarter scuffle, where he first shoved Plumlee who was in the air trying to save an out of bounds ball, into a young boy in the stands, then proceeded to grab Plumlee by the neck. Clippers need to put a fucking leash on that mutt
In fact, and what was not shown on a single replay, Griffin had just fouled Plumlee near the top of the key on his way to the basket, causing Plums to have to run hard to catch up. What was the deal at the end of the game when Reddick was standing holding the ball, looked right at the ref, and yelled, "He fouled me", so then the ref called a foul? I've never seen Dame react like that before to a call, ever. I guess he'd had it by that point. Also, anyone notice the elbow to the head Chris Paul gave Dame earlier in the game, near the top of the key? I swear he does it to Dame once a game. I don't know how Dame keeps his composure and doesn't clean that bastard's clock.
My first reaction was that Jordan should be ejected for the shot to the neck, before Plumlee retaliated. But what do I know?
My frustration goes way deeper, because the play should have never went that far. $ seconds before Blake is giving Plums a complete bear hug. Play should have been called dead with a foul right then and there. Complete and utter bullshit referring.
It's pretty bad when you're a worse ref than Tony Brothers. Maybe she's on his crew to make him look good by comparison?
Nothing to see here. The refs were almost perfect and probably should have called more fouls on the Blazers and allowed more flopping and whining from the Clippers. Now back to reality.... I thought Lauren in particular lost control of the game, let River's constant hounding affect her and made calls that weren't even just bad but downright horrible. The last two she made were especially egregious. Paul ran right into Napier....completely changing direction and totally initiating contact. The next one had Stotts laughing so hard in disgust it's like he was trying to get a 'T' to make a point. For some reason Rivers is allowed to rant, scream, yell and show the refs up all night and none of them have the ball to do anything about it. It's like Green is allowed to keep kicking people and no call or fine is made. Last night was so predictable in terms of outcome that I turned down free 5th row seats. Watching the Clippers is annoying, watching Rivers is irritating and there was no way after the playoff last year that a healthy Clipper team was losing this game. I just didn't know ref Lauren was going to make it even worse.
