nba officiating

I thoroughly enjoy watching the NBA, especially the playoffs. Tonight's game four between the Cavs and Magic should be a great game; if the Cavs don't get a win tonight, it may be all over in the Eastern Finals. However, over the past few years, the NBA playoffs have often been overshadowed by what I consider the biggest problem facing the game today: extremely inconsistent and poor officiating.

Over the past decade or so, the officiating crews have slowly become very lax with calling traveling, and very stringent calling touch fouls. This combination has caused the players to evolve and often fundamentally change the way they play the game. In today's game, a slashing guard who can take a defender off the dribble, get to the basket, cause some contact near the rim, and hope for either a made basket, a quick put back for a big man because his defender was forced to help, or most often, to get a foul call is the most prized player a team could have. This style of play has made players Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James superstars. And these players are doing exactly what they should be doing. They have strong incentive to play with abandon and hope for a foul call because officials consistently call the game that way. This type of officiating, however, is doing a disservice to the game in my opinion.

Throughout the past few playoff seasons officiating has been incredibly inconsistent and at times even corrupt (read Tim Donaghy). I think the problems really started coming to light during the '06 Finals between the Mavericks and Heat. Anyone who watched that series remembers it as the finals that Dwane Wade shot 4,324 free throws. Now I don't blame Wade for continually driving to the basket to get fouls, he was just trying to win and that was the easiest way to do it. But I also firmly believe that the Mavericks were the best team in the league that year, and the officials going foul crazy cost them the championship.

And calling touch fouls near the basket isn't the only problem with the officiating. How officials distinguish personal fouls, flagrant ones and flagrant twos is unbelievably inconsistent. For example, Ron Artest was given a flagrant two for a hard foul on Pau Gasol at the end game 5 of this year's western conference semifinals. The foul was nothing more than a strong attempt to defend the basket. It was obviously a foul, but in the NBA you should be allowed to aggressively defend your basket when you can put your body between it and the offensive player. Instead Artest was ejected. Contrast that with Dwight Howard throwing a deliberate elbow at Samuel Dalembert in game five the Orlando-Philly series in round one. Called a flagrant one on the court, Howard was not ejected and helped lead the magic to a come from behind victory that gave them a commanding 3-2 series lead. Although is was later upgraded to a flagrant two, the damage was done and the sixers lost their chance to steal a game in Orlando and force the Magic to have to be the team that needed to win two in a row. These types of inconsistencies need to be corrected. Not to mention the arbitrary seven flagrants in the course of the playoffs equal a suspension rule. When officials are giving out flagrants like candy, the league is just asking for one of their big stars (perhaps this year it could be Howard or Kobe Bryant) to be forced to miss a game during the finals. Does the league really want one of its biggest stars to be absent during the league's biggest stage?

Now officials are always going to miss some calls. Basketball is definitely the most difficult game to officiate, and at the end of the day, most things are going to just be judgment calls by the officials as the play happens. However, the NBA could do a lot to improve overall quality by taking three measures: use only the best officials during the playoffs, rewrite and clarify both the rules and penalties associated with flagrant fouls, and instruct officials to start giving the benefit of the doubt to defenders when there is body contact near the basket when the offensive player is the one initiating the contact.

The first proposal would have obvious and immediate benefits. Currently the NBA uses almost half of its officials in the playoffs, sometimes regardless of merit. By using only 15 or so officials in the playoffs (even fewer would be needed in later rounds), they would be able to increase the quality of officiating while at the same time eliminate some of the discrepancies in calls due to differences between crews.

Secondly, the league does not call flagrant fouls consistently and uniformly. Anytime the league is forced to review calls after the fact and constantly upgrade personals to flagrant ones, while at the same time downgrade some flagrant twos back to flagrant ones, that should signal that there is something wrong with the standard. Flagrant ones are defined as unnecessary contact, while a flagrant two is unnecessary and excessive. Now almost anyone would recognize how subjective the concepts of "unnecessary" and "excessive" can be. I think it would be in the best interest of the league to redefine these fouls, or at least issue a memo clarifying them, in which it specifically describes the types of conduct that are required to receive the foul, including any intent necessary. For instance, they may decide that an elbow to the head with intent to elbow is a flagrant two, while and elbow without intent is only a flagrant one. While not every scenario could be specifically described, probably 95% of the common scenarios could be. The holes could be filled in through judgment by the league after the fact, for use as precedent for later games. I have no doubt that such a system would provide much more consistency, and at the end of the day predictability should be the goal.

Lastly, officials need to start letting more things go near the basket. Now I am a HUGE LeBron James fan, but even I have to admit that he at times can get preferential treatment from officials. And it is no fault of his. He is so big, strong, and fast that he can just slash to the basket and draw a foul. However, officials need to allow more types of contact near the rim in these situations. Obviously, if the defender moves his body into a position that impedes the offensive players progress to the basket, a foul should be called. But when a defender starts near the basket, or keeps himself between the offensive player and the basket the entire play, there is an acceptable amount of body contact that is not a foul. Until the league retrains officials to be more lenient for defenders, I think the quality of the basketball will suffer.

THE KING

JUST WATCHED LEBRON WIN GAME 2. UNBELIEVABLE. I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW AWESOME THIS SERIES HAS BEEN. MVP! MVP! MVP!

one more year of school

I have finally finished my finals, so I am no officially done with my second year of law school.  Unlike many law students, I am in no hurry to get out of law school because attending school in Austin, Texas is pretty much the best thing ever.  But anyway, I should have plenty of time to blog over the Summer, so hopefully I keep this updated with a bunch of new posts.

First, my roommate Randy pointed out this Peter King article from his weekly Monday Morning Quarterback column.  The article does a good job of breaking down why the Eagles had one of the best drafts in the league in 2009 and is an interesting glimpse at how the Eagles front office approaches the draft.  Obviously I loved the Eagles draft this year: we got better at every offensive skill position, were able to get players with great value for the position they were taken, and added a couple of picks next year.  I am really pumped for the Eagles this season.  I think they have to be the favorites to not only win the NFC East, but the NFC as well.  

On a similar Philly sports note, the Raul Ibanez signing has worked out better than I could have ever imagined.  Nobody is happier about this than my Dad, since now he can constantly remind me how much better Ibanez is playing than former Phillies left-fielder Pat Burrell.  But I must say that Ibanez has been outstanding.  He hit his 14th homer of the year tonight and is hitting over 0.350.  I complained initially after the signing, mostly because of what we had to pay him, how old he was, and we lost our only slugging right-handed bat just to add another lefty.  But the results speak for themselves.  If Ibanez keeps up this pace, he would be the NL MVP.  If the Phils' starting pitchers ever get it together, they are gonna be a tough team to beat.

Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals just ended in a 107-106 upset win for Orlando.  Very good game.  In the final minutes both teams hit big shots, but the other kept answering.  When LeBron got a huge and one with 25 seconds left to put Cleveland up by two, I thought it was over for sure.  But Rashard Lewis hit a huge three with a hand in his face to give Orlando the eventual win.  I think this is gonna be a tough series for the Cavs, who haven't been challenged at all yet in the playoffs, but I think they still are going to win in six.  Obviously I love LeBron, but I think Moe Williams is the key for the Cavs.  If he can create for himself, that will really open things up for LeBron, and when he isn't forced to do everything himself, he is pretty much unstoppable.  

Lastly, I want to post a letter my dad sent into a bunch of newspapers after the Chrysler bankruptcy agreement was released.  I think he is absolutely right, and the moral of the story is that whenever the government becomes so deeply entrenched in private business, it will be able to unfairly flex its muscles in negotiations and get exactly what it wants.  In this case, they used the TARP bailouts as leverage against several of Chrysler's secured creditors, forcing them to accept the government offer.  Unfortunately, the banks receiving the bailouts may have been Chrysler's largest creditors, but not their only secured creditors.  The smaller bondholders were forced to accept whatever the large banks acquiesced to because the large banks held a large enough amount of the debt to force the smaller creditors to take a raw deal.  The smaller bondholders were ready to force the issue in bankruptcy court, but the big banks decided it was in their best interest to to take a loss in this transaction so that they could continue to receive billions more in bailouts over the coming months.  It is a perfect example of government intervention favoring certain companies over others.  And people wonder why so much is spent on lobbying and special interests seem to run Washington.  When the federal government routinely gets involved in private enterprise, of course the companies are going to lobby both elected officials and government bureaucrats.  They have a huge incentive.  Anyway, below is the text of my Dad's letter.

While the average taxpayer goes about their business the federal government is in the process of nationalizing the automobile industry. As part of their proposed reorganization plan, both Chrysler (which entered bankruptcy court on May 1, 2009) and General Motors have proposed a federal government/auto workers union partnership to “save” these two companies. As part of this plan, the taxpayer is expected to be the piggy bank that finances this partnership.

This is the second major industry (the banking industry was the first) the feds are in the process of nationalizing. The health care and energy industries are next in the sights of our Washington politicians.

If the Obama admistration has its way, the big winners in this arrangement will be the united auto workers. The UAW and their pension fund will own 55% of Chrysler while the bondholders (who are secured creditors in bankruptcy court) were offered less then 10% position. It is obvious that the Obama administration is partnering with the UAW to run the auto industry. The bond holders (lenders who have lent Chrysler billions of dollars) are being asked to take a bath for the benefit of the UAW.

For two centuries the free market economic system in the United States has been the economic engine that was the envy of the world. The free market economic system has allowed a relatively obscure collection of 13 colonies to develop into the most powerful and wealthy economy ever seen in this world. There have been ups and downs in the economy over the centuries but when left alone, capitalism has an amazing self correcting mechanism to deal with its excesses. Limited government, sound money, free markets allowed free people to prosper in a way that had not been seen in this world.

Markets were free and hard work was rewarded throughout American history. Since the new deal was enacted in the 1930’s the federal government has injected itself more and more in the free market economy. More and more taxes and regulations were enacted to draw valuable assets from the private sector into the hands of the government. Along the way, government spending increased to the point taxes were not enough to cover expenses. Massive borrowing, deficit spending and an unsustainable national debt resulted.

Up to now, capitalism has been able to survive excessive taxation and regulation and still return a portion of its wealth to the tax man to finance our welfare society. The banking and auto industry bailouts are the beginning of a movement to nationalize our major wealth producing industries. The government has proven that everything it touches it cannot manage properly and will typically require unlimited subsidies to survive. With the banking, auto, health care and energy industries under government control in the future, these wealth creating industries face a bleak future. And as we move further toward European style socialism, our freedom and our individual and national wealth will gradually erode. The standard of living for the average person will continue to decline as our national wealth erodes.

Once we as a society nationalize and regulate the major wealth producing industries, the wealth will be eliminated from the national equation and we will have effectively “destroyed the goose that laid the golden eggs”. This will have negative long lasting effects on our economic and political freedom (they go hand-in-hand). This will also affect our individual and national wealth and equally important our national security. Our national wealth allows us to have a military that has been the envy of the world and one that is rarely challenged.

What does all this have to do with the Chrysler bailout you say? We as a society have reached an inflection point. We have begun a journey toward socialism. Do we allow our economy to move from a capitalist system to a socialist system? Do we allow the unions along with the government to force out private investors with little or no compensation? Do we remove risk taking and reward from the business equation? Do we eliminate individual responsibility from society and replace it with collectivism? Do we say that society is responsible for the individual and not the individual responsible for themselves? All these broad questions are being answered in the context of the Chrysler bailout.

The Chrysler bailout if executed as proposed by the Obama administration will continue the pattern of opportunistic takeovers by the Obama administration. In a few years we will have our banking, automobile, health care and energy industries owned and/or operated by the US government. Is this the change you wanted? Is this what you were hoping for? Do we want our children some day to ask how did we allow this to happen?