i’ve been watching the nba for over 30 years and have heard bitching about refs for every single season.

I don’t think it’s that the refs are bad as much as that they’re being asked to do an impossible task in a stupid way. Euroleage refs really aren’t any better but their game can be a lot more entertaining despite the much lower level of talent on the floor because FIBA isn’t trying to juice offense by rewarding shooters initiating contact.

Silver can fix this whenever he wants, but he’d have to understand the issue, admit it’s a problem, and take all the criticism when average game scores go down and stars like SGA start publicly complaining.

yeah I’d say about 77 years or so

not sure whats worse between refs taking over a game in the nba vs the refs in the W allowing mortal kombat finishers on guards.

Evergreen post

I’d go farther and say the 1% of fans here don’t matter to the NBA at all, not the target market for this product despite the intensity of interest.

While I agree that ratings are probably up due to the large quantity of games on NBC vs TNT, basically every sports’ ratings are up due to a change in the way ratings are calculated.

Shocked that moving from tnt to nbc raised viewership

Shhhh… dont confuse and stir up the hive mind with facts. They don’t like that.

I’m skeptical on the TV number. They also reported the average minutes watched was up only 8%.

I streamed pretty much every single game last year. I’ve been able to watch so many games on apps I already pay for this year.

I think the big boost is coming from people who no long have to use streameast and Kofu.

Part of that is the methodology for counting viewers changed. Other sports broke records too for viewership. I do think putting games on NBC helped a lot as well. These sports leagues putting their games behind cable paywalls as cable dies out doesn’t help them keep or build new fans. So having more than just ABC’s garbage broadcast once a week helped the NBA.

Well, go figure you make the games easier to watch and more people do so. Who the fuck would have thought….

All sports ratings are up, they updated the formula for how they gauge viewership. Making games accessible with an antenna doesn’t mean more people are watching, all of these people were probably already watching one way or another. We have no way of determining if the NBA is growing or declining with the those stats.

How much of that viewership is boosted by Prime users that already had Prime and are now essentially watching it for free?

It’s definitely partially a ref problem. Star players in the NBA play by completely different rules than regular players. It’s been that way for 30+ years.

IMO the most obvious example is with push offs. Any guard that’s around the MVP discussion is allowed to do blatant push offs on every possession.

NBA is the only major sport where the special treatment for big name players is so blatant. The leagues own announcers will talk about how it’s “deserved”.

Bullshit. Where in the rulebook does it say “Draymond gets to scream in refs’ faces and assault his opponents for as long as he’d like and he gets a pass”?

Agreed, it isn’t a ref (the person) problem, but it’s an officiating in general problem, where the league dictates what and how things are enforced. 

And as an old person that’s watched for decades I’d say it’s the most unwatchable right now, but this also includes all the crazy long ad breaks. 

But it’s mostly the refs. As the OP said, defenders should be allowed to defend, especially when offensive players are allowed to initiate everything. 

It seems like a simple thing to change, but for whatever reason they aren’t. 

This is a rulebook problem.

I agree that there’s a problem with the “points of emphasis” purporting to change the rules without actually changing the rules.

But the bigger problem is that most fans don’t understand the rules at all. They think correctly called plays were wrongly called. A lot of this is because they consume NBA content in biased bubbles: local TV crews, team-focused blogs and social media accounts, and subreddits.

Agreed. Offensive players have too big an advantage over the defense, they need to clarify or simplify the rule book to level the playing field again without turning it into a brawl.

Cracking down on travels, carries, moving screens, etc. might help. Anything to give the defense some help, and reduce the instances where crafty ball handlers can basically create a foul out of thin air.

I mostly agree. It’s amazing to me just how much we’ve slowly normalized refball over time. “going up trying to get the foul” isn’t a thing in other sports, and it used to not be a thing in basketball. We treat foul-baiting and flopping as a normal part of the sport; consider how often announcers praise someone for “selling the foul” or the number of times per game someone slams into a defender and just throws the ball towards the hoop. Soccer has flopping, but players are endless clowned about it; in the nba it’s treated as a normal skill to be developed.

The real problem with these “emphasize different rules” isn’t the per-year changes, it’s the in-season memos that go out secretly. Everybody knows they exist, everyone knows they have huge effects, but they don’t get published. Eventually this is going to turn into a massive betting scandal.

People are always going to complain about the refs, that’s just part of sports. And some of the inconsistencies around technicals and ejections falls directly on the refs. But most of the problem is the league itself.

Cqll me crazy, but this isn’t a referee problem. This is a rulebook problem.

It’s both. The league has gotten so used to every. damn. thing. being a foul that players instantly start bitching and moaning if they feel the slightest bit of contact on their way to the hoop. I’m not saying it should be the WWE and we should have people getting hurt, but FFS, man. There are so many “fouls” that get called just because a guy misses a shot & starts whining. Who TF wants to watch that?

They are the same post

It’s just all complaining. This whole sub is a bitch and moan fest

And they’ll all be back for the next game watching every possession. The game thread yesterday was hilarious, so many “literally unwatchable” comments from people who stuck around for every minute.

Insert feeling daring today Squidward meme here

It’s the same complaint worded differently.

It’s all complaints. Complain about how NBA media is too negative, and then all the top posts are memes and complaints about the league or refs

I just don’t understand the Shai hate. I mean I do, but it can never be rationalized to me. He’s such an incredible and talented player. We’re incredibly lucky as fans to be able to watch him, Jokic, and hopefully Wemby, in these western conference playoffs.

Yeah in no way shape or form is SGA killing interest in the NBA.

I think it’s the combination of inconsistent refereeing (not just bad but “favors one side in a particular game” bad) from play to play AND the league selling its soul to gambling companies that’s the source of people’s angst.

The perception that refs aren’t just bad at their jobs, they might all be corrupt and the NBA is okay with that because they’re now dogs on a leash held by Draftkings, Fanduel, BetMGM, etc….thats what is causing the angst

It’s a TikTok narrative that people want to bring to real life

It’s an abusive relationship for sure.

This one’s atleast funny though because OP believes a decision going against the Suns is going to lead to the entire league being dissolved.

Another hour.

Another day, another year. Fans have always complained about the refs. They’re not actually worse than they used to be - it’s just that now social media amplifies negative content to drive engagement, and complaining about the refs is perfect for that

The only team that gets that much hate for ft numbers are the Lakers. And they dominate the ft margin every year.

Its the same as all the hate Boston got for chugging 3s after their ring. Like they were destroying the essence of basketball and now they are doing the same and almost no one talks about it.

26th for FTA attempts last year, 16th this year.

SGA is the only one on the team that gets many of them and he does so at a rate that’s expected for the amount of shots and where he takes them. If every player got calls at the same rate based on where they took the shot, SGA would likely be the very top in FTA.

shhhhh….They’d have to admit OKC is better than their team if it’s not the free throws

People forget that the refs protected the shit out of MJ lol. Even Magic joked about that while posing for a photo at the all star game.

“You can’t get too close to Michael, it’s a foul” 😅

Kobie could be out there stabbing people and the refs wouldn’t have noticed

OP is a wolves fan. Their coach is the biggest whiner in the league and for whatever reason wolves fans are always all over these OKC game threads complaining about everything when theyre team isn’t even involved. Just click on any OKC complaint thread and there’s always a bunch of wolves flairs lol.

I do agree though that the refs arent the problem. It’s a rules problem. Specifically, the gather step bullshit has made it virtually impossible to legally guard players that have elite footwork. Players have to defend extremely close up and get into bad defensive positions which create bad reach fouls because otherwise the offensive player can essentially “legally travel” on a step back using the gather step rule and create way too much separation.

The last line rang true though, “The offensive player cannot be allowed to just sprint into defenders and get the whistle”. Agreed with that. It’s not just an SGA thing either.

The offensive player just dribbles into their defender at the elbow, jumps sideways, heaves up a shot, and gets the foul is ridiculous. Thats never been a foul, but this season there’s a slew of them every game and a handful more where the offensive player does it, misses badly, and raises their arms wildly in protest when there isn’t a whistle.

Getting a foul called and actually getting fouled aren’t the same thing tho.

This sub is miserable as fuck. I’m having so much fun watching all the playoffs series and losers here only talk about the fucking refs

Denver’s also playing a team that’s willing to run directly through jumpshooters on like 6 straight possessions in the first quarter just to raise the bar of what the referees are calling.

And even if they weren’t coached that way, that series has the bad blood of like 30 meetings between these teams in the last 4 years. The ref’s have turned some singular minutes of game clock into 20 minutes of stoppages trying and failing to regain control of the game.

Game attendance is it an all find high.

Yet they had record attendance this year. You may feel that way but they are selling more tickets then ever. They also had record tv viewership.

This is a much better point.

The streaming is a mess and buying tickets to games (Ticketmaster) sucks.

It’s like clockwork with these people.

Like damn. We didn’t even make it 2 games into the playoffs before these mouth-breathing window-lickers start spewing this bullshit. 😭😭😭

They do have a different audience. The people here are less than 0.0001% of it. No one cares about the whining and crying here.

Lot of people claiming “this game is so unwatchable” after watching yet another game

The people here don’t like basketball. They like to cry about whatever reason they have created in their head for why their team doesn’t win.

Oh, you with your stats and numbers. Get outta here with that highbrow nonsense. The refs and the NBA clearly rig games to favor the big-market draw of…Oklahoma City. /s

You can post all the “facts” and “numbers” you want, I have eyes and my eyes tell me that OKC is #1 in free throw disparity all year every year, sga shot 28 free throws last night in game 2, and lu dirt literally carries a baseball bat on the court with him. That’s what I see and you’ll never get me to see anything else

But it’s not the amount it’s how they got them!

• A person will say with a straight face after watching playoff basketball where there are regular season fouls happening every play.

Exactly. And it’s funny cause the NFL did research on this years ago when they had the backup refs, and the percentage of viewer drop off estimated due to poor calls was like less than a quarter of a %

That’s one of my main questions. Show me where basketball is officiated well? Surely you can’t watch college basketball and prefer that officiating.

They’re refereeing ballet with aliens. It’s extremely difficult. The only other alternative is players call their own fouls.

It’s not so much that the officiating is bad, it’s that officiating in general is incredibly difficult. Especially in professional sports where the players continue to get bigger and faster, and everything can be slowed down after the fact to see every little movement that would be impossible to see in real time.