Adam Silver Needs To Grow Up And Fix His Officiating Problem
Adam Silver and the NBA are convinced that in order to save their league and keep people interested in the sport, the NBA needs to do things like stop load management, create a fugazi In Season Tournament, and maybe tweak some flopping rules that naturally all officials have already given up enforcing now that we're in mid November.
Meanwhile, they continue to completely miss the point. If Silver and the league really wanted to address a glaring issue that fans care about, he would fix his brutal officiating problem. I'm not just talking about a missed foul call, or a ref looking directly at someone stepping out of bounds and not calling them out of bounds, I'm talking about how his officials continue to rob the game of everything we love about it.
Talking shit.
At some point, someone has to say something and if I have to be that guy so be it. I'm obviously an NBA bobo, I love it. I watch every dribble every night from October to June. I'm in. But what we are seeing happen to star players (or really anyone) routinely as we watch these games has to be addressed and stopped.
The most notable example of this of course is Giannis' ejection from the other day. What did he do? Nothing
OK, so he dunked in Isaiah Stewarts' face, kind of screamed and then barely did the "too small" celebration. You know, something that players have done a billion times before. Is that tech worthy? Especially in a game where Giannis already had one? Absofuckinglutely not. Has this ref ever played or watched basketball before? I'm thinking no. And don't get it twisted, I would feel this way if it was Giannis or the shitty Antetokounmpo brother. That is not even nothing, it's less than nothing.
Fast forward to last night's Warriors/Wolves games. Anthony Edwards, ever heard of him? He's only becoming one of the most exciting overall players in the entire league. Facing off against a good team the Wolves have a history with, he found himself with an opportunity to make a monster play
An awesome dunk, some light shit-talking with nothing all that egregious, and what happens? Boom. Immediate taunting tech.
Hey Adam Silver you doofus
What are we doing here? You want to know how you kill interest in your product? This. Those two plays. We're now penalizing star players after they make awesome plays and don't even really do anything. Those weren't taunts, they were normal reactions to making a huge play. Even if they were "taunts", WHO CARES??? Is this not professional sports? Now we are telling players they can't play with emotion when they do something awesome? That makes the product better…….how exactly?
I just do not know how the league office could look at these situations and come to the conclusion that the league needs more of this type of stuff. What is happening to the game I love? If you don't want someone to stare you down after they dunk on you, stop them from dunking on you. If you want players to play hard at all times, even early November games, don't penalize them for when they show the type of emotion that can come with playing hard. I'm a moron, but I feel like that's Day 1 type stuff.
Instead, you could make the case that NBA officiating has never been worse. Every single night we see multiple instances of NBA refs impacting games in all the worst ways. The more I think about it, there isn't a taunting situation that I could ever imagine warrants a tech. Talking shit in sports is OK! If someone wants to taunt and put a target on their back for the rest of the game, that's their problem. We shouldn't be stopping games and calling tech because someone stared at a player for 1.5 seconds after a monster dunk.
Grow up Adam. Figure this shit out and tell your refs to stop being so goddamn lame. That's what is ruining your product and the interest that casual fans have. As long as that continues, nothing will change.