Awful Officiating

I try not to blame too much of the outcome on officiating, honestly I do.  Referees are only human, they are bound to make mistakes.  It happens.  When it happens it can be a crushing blow to your team, but at times your team may be the beneficiary of a blown call.  Over time it should all even out.  It's easy for us to sit at home, with the benefit of slow motion HD replay, and point out every mistake.  It's much harder to make those calls on borderline plays in real time.  I understand that, really I do.

That being said, this Miami-Boston series is turning into a disgrace in officiating.  We're only two games in and already the storylines of this series are being overshadowed by debating the questionable officiating.

The story in Game 1 was the 5 technical fouls called on the Celtics.  Ok, so one of them was for illegal defense, that's fair.  But what about the one called on mild mannered Ray Allen?  What could he possibly have said to deserve a tech?  We know what Doc Rivers said to deserve his.  All he shouted was "C'Mon Ed!" at referee Ed Malloy in protest of a missed call.  Talk about a quick trigger.  It's amazing that a Celtics player didn't end up getting ejected from that game just for looking at a referee the wrong way.  The bogus technicals left a sour taste in the mouths of the Celtics players and fans, but it's not the reason they lost Game 1.  The Heat outplayed a Celtics team that was clearly running on fumes after wrapping up a grueling 7 game series against Philadelphia just two nights earlier.  The better team one that night, regardless of the questionable calls.

Game 2 was a different story.  This game was tightly contested to the end, which didn't end until after an overtime period was played.  The Celtics played about as well as they possibly could have, but still fell short.  Unlike in the previous game though, the questionable calls against Boston did impact the outcome of the game.  Here are just a few examples of how the officials worked against the Celtics late in the game:

• Miami shot 47 free throws in the game, to Boston's 29 attempts. 
• LeBron James alone had nearly as many free throw attempts (24) as Boston's entire team.  If you discount Shaq's numbers, which were clearly inflated by the "Hack-A-Shaq" strategy, the most free throw attempts in a playoff game is Michael Jordan with 28.
• Three Celtics players fouled out of the game, including Paul Pierce.  Greg Stiemsma barely saw the court after picking up 4 fouls in 5 minutes.
• Pierce fouled out of the game on a very borderline call.  He was outside the restricted circle and had position before Dwayne Wade lept into the air.  Pierce left his feet, but went straight up, which is legal.  Should have been a none call.  Instead it put Wade at the free throw line and made Pierce a spectator for the final 7 minutes of the game.
• When do you ever see a super star player foul out of a big playoff game?  Pierce seems to get less respect from the officials than any other future Hall of Famer.
• Mickael Pietrus was called for a clear path foul.  As ESPN's Kevin Pelton pointed out on Twitter last night, a clear path foul can't be called inside the free throw line.  Even after reviewing the call on replay, the refs still got it wrong.  They either didn't understand the rule, or ignored it to favor Miami.  Either scenario is unacceptable.  The blown call gave Miami two free throws, plus possession of the ball.
• I realize that LeBron missed both free throws, then Mike Miller missed an open three pointer on the next possession, so the blown call didn't result in any points for Miami.  Just pointing it out as another example of a bad call, despite that it didn't actually impact the game.
• Kevin Garnett was called for a foul on Dwayne Wade, but the contact was made when Wade threw his leg out and kicked KG below the belt.  The call resulted in a three point play.
• The refs missed a blatant call when Rajon Rondo drove to the basket and was racked across the face by Wade, causing him to miss the lay up.  Instead of giving Rondo two free throws, it led to an easy transition basket the other way.
• "We all thought he got hit. I'll say it. He did, but what can you do about it?" - post game comments from Ray Allen.  See, I'm not the only one that thought it was an obvious missed call.

I'm sure there were others earlier in the game as well.  There may have even been a call or two that went in Boston's favor.  But these are the calls that stand out as being terribly mis-called while having a big impact in swinging the momentum late in the game.  I'll admit, I often watch the game with green tinted glasses, but I'm no Tommy Heinsohn.  I try to watch the replays of these calls objectively, but still find myself baffled by them.  I'm not the only one.  ESPN's commentating crew questioned these same calls during the game.  The national media, even those that typically pander to the star studded Heat, admit the Celtics had more than their share of tough breaks.

It got so bad at times that I half expected David Stern to pull off his best Vince McMahon impression by running out on the court and calling for the game to end prematurely as soon as Miami took a lead.  You know it's bad when you see lines on Facebook and Twitter saying things like "The only difference between the NBA and WWE is that WWE still has fans that don't realize the outcome is fixed."  Ok, so maybe that's a bit harsh, but games like this do make you wonder if the Tim Donaghy's of the NBA have actually been wiped out.

It's a shame that the Celtics weren't able to pull out a win in this game.  Not just for the obvious reason of what the loss does to their playoff chances (teams that fall down 2-0 in the playoffs lose the series 94% of the time), but because Rajon Rondo deserved a win for his Herculean effort.  He nearly won the game himself down the stretch and recorded one of the best stat lines of his career.  He narrowly missed another triple-double, while recording a career high 44 points.  What made it even more amazing is that he racked up many of those points by capitalizing on what have always been his biggest weaknesses.  He hit 10 of his 12 shots from beyond 16 feet, including two clutch three pointers, while also hitting 10 of his 12 free throw attempts.  Oh yeah, plus he also played all 53 minutes of the game!  It may be the best game I've ever seen Rondo play, which is saying a lot, considering I was there in person for his eye popping 29-18-13 triple-double against Cleveland on Mother's Day during the 2010 playoffs.  He deserved better than this frustrating defeat for his efforts.  He was clearly the best player on the court last night.

Officials can't be expected to make the right call all the time.  Mistakes happen and will continue to happen.  It's only a small sample size and the trend could reverse course once the series shifts to Boston tomorrow night.  Yet so far in this series it's hard to ignore how one sided these games have been called.  Sometimes the play is borderline and the call could go either way, so when it goes against your team it's just bad luck.  Sometimes the refs may just not have seen it clearly.  Game 2 was an example where these mistakes piled up far too frequently. I'm not really one for conspiracy theories, but we know from past scandals that the NBA has a track record of officials making calls that may be influenced by their biases against certain players or teams.  Perhaps that's what we are seeing here, perhaps not. 

It certainly does the NBA no favors that the outcry of shady officiating during a playoff game happened to occur the same night that the league owned New Orleans Hornets found lottery luck by winning the top top pick in this summer's draft, despite that the odds favored three other teams ahead of them.  Of course that could be a coincidence, as it's not unprecedented for a team to move up in the lottery - that's what it's there for.  Yet it's hard to ignore that the team that got the top pick in a draft with a clear cut future star at the top happens to be the team the league is in the process of selling to Tom Benson, who also owns the New Orleans Saints.  After the league rejected several low ball offers from Benson, could the league have sealed the deal by agreeing to fix the lottery in their favor if he raised his offer more to the league's liking?  Probably not, but that's the conspiracy theory that many will suspect.  It looks shady, even though it's probably just coincidence.  The same can be said about the officials.  They may not be trying to make the Celtics lose, but the calls they keep messing up on just happen to be going against them.

Sadly we may be inching toward the end of an era for this Celtics team.  They'll go down fighting, but it's tough to play five on eight on the court.  I wasn't expecting them to win the series anyway, but thought they'd at least make it a hard fought seven game affair.  The way things are going, it's looking more like they'll be lucky just to lose in five games to avoid a sweep.

Is it too early to start rooting for the Spurs?