OT: Rockets Referee Report Discussion
This is obviously off topic but after I read the article I really wanted to talk about with other people. I have no "dog" in this fight as I don't really care about Houston or Golden State but the report still came off as sour grapes and whiny to me. Willing to hear different perspectives though.
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26634745/rockets-audited-18-game-7-say-finals-bid-taken
My initial response is: get over it and stop it with the sour grape stuff.
Then I remembered how often Michigan football formally filed complaints about reffing to the Big Ten. And then I started to feel embarrassed.
Imagine the joys of not having to make excuses every November!
Reminds me a lot of Seth's post here in October 2015 after the MSU game --- where he spent hours of time to do some non-trivial math and analysis, eventually coming to the conclusion that the refs cost U-M, down to the hundredth of a decimal point (!), 23.58 points.
OK, fair enough. The time spent and detail and the exactness of a number (Houston ALSO came up with a number down to the hundredth of a decimal point) are all nice from a theoretical POV.
But I also don't see it being worth it from a realistic or practical POV. The result of the game was what it was. And that result isn't going to change.
Unpopular take but reffing is hard and besides some extreme cases I don't think refs have it out for anyone. Some of the bitching about refs here gets ridiculous, not that I think it's worse than any other fan base. It's part of what turns me off about basketball. Red complaints seem to come up way more. Probably in part because it's quite easy to foul out in college, which is an absurd thing to happen really. In football you get ejected for dirty hits or fighting. In basketball it can be from grazing a shooting elbow.
I'm not even saying all the bitching is unjustified, a lot of it is due to red errors, but I get tired of it pretty quickly.
April 29th, 2019 at 10:43 PM ^
The incessant foul calls, only 1/2 of which are actually worth a whistle, and the refusal to call traveling and carrying make basketball pretty unwatchable.
April 29th, 2019 at 11:10 PM ^
Or if you're Joe Bolden, stumbling and falling down gets you ejected.
April 29th, 2019 at 11:21 PM ^
Bolden was actually thrown on top of the MSU player by a....MSU player.
That was the horse-shittiest of all horse-shit calls. The bastards had video review too. I agree that officiating is difficult, but when you have video reviews that come to obviously wrong conclusions one cannot help but to think that either the ref(s) have it out for a team (or player) or they are too damned arrogant to admit that their original call was incorrect and reverse it. wtf.gif.
So, I think from a fan perspective that kind of behavior seems largely ok. This is a professional organization doing it and it just feels weird.
I know you're generally a pretty reasonable fan but all the same any member of the penn state fanbase taking a Michigan fan to task for excessive complaining about refs is pretty hilarious. You guys are notorious for your longstanding refereeing conspiracy theories.
The Rockets should do a self audit and count how many times Harden traveled during game 7. The NBA is extremely difficult to watch these days
They have to get over it and focus on this series...none of this can be changed now so really no point of them making this.
April 29th, 2019 at 11:46 PM ^
It just makes the league office angry, and Houston won't like them when they're angry.
Not a good look. Did they factor in the calls and bounces that DID go their way? It’s like hearing dudes complain in golf that their 85 should have been a 78 because of a 25 foot putt that spun out and a bad lie, etc., but those dudes never add on the shots they were lucky to make.
You clearly did not read the article.
i was very skeptical, but it looks like they factored everything in. For example, if something supposedly detrimental to the Rockets (missed foul etc) actually resulted in a better result, they would count it as a positive towards themselves. If there was a missed call that should’ve resulted in GS at the line, they would multiply the amount of free throws to the players FT percentage to make out the expected points lost for GS etc...
In the end Houston apparently was snubbed around 20 points
Score more points than your opponent.
This is such a bad take. Refs have an impact in games that can be measured in points using stats. If a ref gives an opposing team 8 points it is harder to score more points than the other team.
Meh. Pretty stock take right here. Kind of whiny too.
True. But unless its systematic bias, it'll regress to the mean (here, 0). And further, how do you expect to take imperfection out of humans? Like, complain that refs make errors, sure. Then how do you rectify this? Whining like a bitch isnt gonna make them *want* to help you any more than before.
It's like people complaining that we don't have wings. Cool, do you have a solution? No? Then don't bitch, it makes you sound. . . like a bitch.
If Houston wasn't so good at flopping and flinging their legs into their defenders' landing zones on jump shots, they would probably be a 6 or 7 seed. James Harden is a pathetic, whiny con artist and players like him are one of the reasons the NBA is crap compared to what it was in the 80's and 90's.
The NBA being crap compared to those eras is first of all your opinion. Second of all, I think almost everyone would disagree with you. There is more talent in the league right now than ever, and it makes for exciting basketball.
He said that so he could counter with ‘but almost everyone agrees with me.’ Just a lazy take.
Speaking only on game 1 of this years series. Harden was fouled on 3 possibly 4 three pointers but not on his final attempt. Chris Paul also was not fouled on his one in question because he kicked his legs out drastically. That being said, the Rockets should have taken at least 9 more free throws that would have resulted in less technical fouls called against them.
It's true that Paul thrust his hip out to the right to make contact with Livingston, and that part of the play wasn't a foul. But Livingston had already hacked him, hard, on the forearm. Hand is part of the ball; wrist and forearm are not. That was a foul.
I agree with you on Harden's last attempt.
April 29th, 2019 at 11:51 PM ^
Rockets have strategically been taking advantage of the rules all year...good for them...but this is the playoffs and Chris Paul and James Harden’s BS of coming down into players isn’t going to fly in the playoffs. They initiate the contact most of the time so for them to wine is pretty hilarious. That is like Ohio State calling for more stringent academic standards in the Big Ten...would be a joke.
Given we've been talking so much GOT around here lately...
that would have resulted in less technical fouls called against them.
Fewer.
Well... they don't account for all the travels, offensive fouls/push offs and flops/kicks by Harden. Seriously, he commits an offensive foul almost every time he has the ball by pushing off. And on many step back threes he travels. As for defenders fouling him, many times he flops or kicks/throws his hip into the defender. If you breathe on him, you're likely to get called for a foul. He likely gets many more non fouls called in his favor than missed fouls.
He's a good player but his "greatness" is mainly due to officiating bias in his favor.
That’s really not true on many levels.
First off they did account for those if you read the report. Second of all I have to disagree and say that there really is no “officiating bias” in his favor. He gets the same fouls everyone else would get, it’s just that he draws so many of them that people start to doubt the legitimacy of them. Like if a guy averages 10 FTs a game vs a guy with 5 FTs a game. The guy with 10 will have probably had more questionable calls, given that he gets fouled more in general.
April 29th, 2019 at 10:12 PM ^
Dude Harden is the the offensive version of Brad Davison. After getting the calls on a bunch of close ones, he started not getting all the same calls and embellishing even more which is causing more no calls. He fallls down on every other 3 pointer and launches forward so the natural reaction is to think he’s flopping. A few of the no calls were in fact BS but that’s what happens when you flop on half your attempts.
And the audit was a fucking joke and the rockets should be embarrassed they even drafted it in the first place. I especially like when they claimed a no foul call against Harden cost them two points because Durant hit a 3 vs a poor FT shooter going to the free throw line
April 29th, 2019 at 11:27 PM ^
I find it paradoxical that Harden leads the league in dribbles, yet travels as much as he does.
There are so many points scored in a basketball game, the point differential is so small, and every game has multiple close calls/no calls that refs control a basketball game. It's a flawed game.
There's an old saying in economics that seems pertinent here. “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.” (Coase, R.)
Considering the fact that NBA officials have been busted for throwing games, and it is the American sport that gives the most importance to the ref, and there is no reason to assume neutrality in refs, it sounds like a fair argument.
April 29th, 2019 at 11:08 PM ^
Could also be a fair argument for WWE.
I thought it was foul.
Is this the WNBA ?
Objectivity is a rare commodity, on all counts, in the sporting endeavor. Good officials will say that officiating is not all that difficult. Players are taught to challenge the rules and the best players are the best at doing so. Ordinary fans are often baffled by the official interpretations of the rules...the good players generally are not. Officials make mistakes-not nearly as many as the partisans believe are made. Officiating is a part of the game-for the coaches and, certainly, for the players. "If you're not cheating you're not trying"...and the good players know that this is fact. Oh, and here too, "Figures lie and liars figure" is applicable.
My belief on "homefield advantage" is that is predominantly the calls that are not made against the home team that produces the advantage. So, having said all this, officials can definitely influence an outcome...in many different ways.
An expected increase in revenue of $20 million! Yup, that would definitely be worth it. I live in Houston. I would love to see Rockets play a little better defense. I also agree with their approach in auditing that game. NBA appears to have problem with assigning expected point values to each item, but not to the individual instances themselves.
This is actually quite a big development. With a multitude of cameras and points of views, each play can now be dissected in millions of ways. A "simple" swatted ball might be proven to have touched the skin of the offensive player just when the last bit of lace crosses the imaginary base line. Or JT was short of the First Down marker by that proverbial blade of grass. Given the access to technologies, how far would a team go to file grievances?
Question for a fan is whether we want to be right or accurate?
Question for an AD or a GM is how much money did I have leave on the table for those blown calls?
Cricket is my poison. As kids growing up, certain dismissals used to be hotly debated, contested and fought over. Nowadays technology is used to "predict" which way the ball would have traveled after hitting the batsman! Being an aerospace engineer, I think that's pure voodoo. But I enjoy the calls that go my team's way using that technology.
I would think this could become norm and a few years after that, we would get a lot more technology support to get things called accurately. I think it will improve the games for all involved.
I like your question regarding whether we want to be right or accurate. Here, I believe the use of technology to the point of "indisputable" evidence is okay but even here the line is a fine one. As has been noted, basketball presents quite the dilemma. Do we really want the game to be called by 20 officials watching monitors from a booth to be calling every violations they see??? And the same applies to football....there would likely be multiple penalties on each team on every play...what an unmitigated mess this would be. Baseball would seem to lend itself to more technology being useful. As with most things in life we are stuck with our human selves and we just have to be okay with the imperfections. I'll cast my lot in favor of the saying, "Perfection is the enemy of good".
I'm shocked that an organization with Chris Paul and James Harden would cry foul after the fact and not simply accept that they lost.
April 29th, 2019 at 11:37 PM ^
I'm sure the league will vacate all those calls later.
I think that this is a good analysis, except that it should be conducted by a neutral party. Refs too often get away from calling a bad game, not because they missed calls which are not totally avoidable and is part of the game, but because their calls are systematically biased favoring one team over the other. Before robot refs become a reality, such analysis will be extremely useful if they can be applied properly.
I have yet to meet a Rockets fan who does not immediately blame the refs every time they lose.
Fans take their cues from the franchise it seems.