I guess the NBA wants to make my blog look bad. Either that, or they have a real failure to communicate internally. After I posted that Kobe’s pass off the backboard was illegal, the NBA confirmed to me it was a travel. So what happens in our game against the Kings? With the game still close, Webber gets stopped, thenthrows the ball against the backboard, gets it back and scores.
I asked the NBA about the playafter the game. They say it’s a travel.They just missed it. They also say they sent out a memo to the officials about it. So what went wrong ? These are all star refs, right?
But wait there is more…
One of the things that the NBA does every year prior to the start of the playoffs is to send a tape to all the teams with violations that they want all the teams to know will be called. Among the violations was an explanation of the jump stop. They did a great job of showing and explaining this move and it was very valuable.
They also said they wouldn’t allow the following travels. First, what was referred to as the “jump start.” In this case the player basically takes a step right then left, vice versa or a little hop before putting the ball down. Kind of a crossover without the dribble.Then they talkedabout switching pivot feet in the post. They explained how difficult it was to watch for these, since the officials were watching the body for contact, and because of this, they would have an off the ball official watch their feet.
All great stuff.
Unfortunately, there must have been a failure to communicate on all of the above. The many examples of both that occured by both teams weren’t called.
Where there wasn’t a failure to communicate was between our staff and players and the officials. We let the refs know these violations were reoccuring from a specific player. We told them it would happen. It did. Repeatedly. I’m sure the other team had comments regarding similar things our team did that weren’t called. Makes you wonder where the failure to communicate starts and stops.
If the NBA was going to bring these violations to our attention, shouldn’t they be prepared to make these calls?
It’s obviously early in the playoff season. I think it’s an adjustment for the officials, all of whom are used to being crew chiefs, to work together in a team. So it will be interesting to see if officiating gets better as games go on.
Just a quick officiating stat. I know its only 2 days of games, but Defensive 3 secs calls are down 81 pct from the regular season. It will be interesting to see if they have stopped calling it.