The NBA is the worst officiated sport in the entire world.

[MorbidHEAT]

I would love for an independent organization to go out and do a full season assessment of refereeing. Every single game so the NBA can be held accountable or at the very least have a spotlight on them (how many bad calls, missed calls, who did them, etc….). I would love to see basketball be the best team wins again.

[Grahf]

I doubt OP was complaining about this when Wade rode the ref's whistle to victory in 2006, or during the big three era:

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But yeah, the officiating is pretty bad. I'm not sure there's any way to make it better. The refs have an insanely tough job, but there's also a long history of incompetence/corruption.

[xdrta+]

There are a lot of referee posts. Maybe we need a poll to find the worst of the whiny, "why is it always my team?', the league is rigged, posts. Might be a close race but this one gets my vote.

[xdrta+]

I would love for an independent organization to go out and do a full season assessment of refereeing. Every single game so the NBA can be held accountable or at the very least have a spotlight on them (how many bad calls, missed calls, who did them, etc….). I would love to see basketball be the best team wins again.

When was the refereeing so perfect that it had no influence on the outcomes of the games. I must have missed that and I've been watching since the 70s.

[Jazz9]

As always, the outcome defines how the refs fared for fans...
My team wins = refs were fine or a non factor
My team loses = refs were awful, it's all rigged etc

[Roscoe Sheed]

Probably one is the hardest sports to officiate

But they break and bend the rules even when they review it in instant replay.


Here, Jaylen Brown hooks Caleb Martin and scores. Coach Spo challenges, and after review... refs say challenge successful, but contact is "marginal" and basket still counts. BASKET COUNTS???? NO FOUL ON BROWN??? Per NBA RULES, "This is illegal contact by the offensive player. Players are not permitted to hook their opponents in any way.”

How is the challenge successful for Miami, but basket stilll counts? And this is clear as day hooking and no foul on brown and basket counts? They reviewed this. This is blatant gambling point shaving or something.

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Right or wrong, they haven’t been calling that a foul going all the way back to Shaq- in fact, that was his go to move. They only call it if you push off

[Savage_Mode]

And how many here have even reffed high school ball? I asked this on a Laker Ref Conspiracy thread last week and was told by everyone that reffing is super easy to do although none of them have ever reffed lol.

[3ammy3uck3ts]

Definitely one of the worst officiated games I’ve seen in a long time. No clue how Miami even had a chance to win it, the end game clock change was funny too. Game 2 against the Knicks when bam fouled hartenstein on the Brunson 3 they were saying the timing was dependent on when the ref motion for the foul, now they want to flip flop and say it’s when the first contact occurred. Nba has a very bad officiating issue.

[celtxman]

Butler double dribbles and then launches himself forward in an unnatural shooting motion. Gets 3 free throws to go ahead with 3 seconds left.

[tweet]16626707840896

We can go back and forth doing this all day. With every NBA game in history.

Wrong.

Horford hits Jimmy in the head at 0:03 and messes him up. Foul on Horford either way.

And three shots, LOL. Let's give Mazzulla for a T for calling the challenge and getting the 3 seconds.

[FlatearthZorro]

Definitely one of the worst officiated games I’ve seen in a long time. No clue how Miami even had a chance to win it, the end game clock change was funny too. Game 2 against the Knicks when bam fouled hartenstein on the Brunson 3 they were saying the timing was dependent on when the ref motion for the foul, now they want to flip flop and say it’s when the first contact occurred. Nba has a very bad officiating issue.

So you won 3 games, we never spoke about the refs. You lost a game, where to me you had the better of a poorly officiated game and now it's the refs??? You guys are such sore losers and poor sports... It's unbelievable. Add to that the fact that nobody on our side has complained about Butler's consistent flopping, and Adebayou breaking every screen setting rule there is. Butler flops 5x more than Smart. I think rn Jimmy's better at flopping than Harden ever was.

[3ammy3uck3ts]

Definitely one of the worst officiated games I’ve seen in a long time. No clue how Miami even had a chance to win it, the end game clock change was funny too. Game 2 against the Knicks when bam fouled hartenstein on the Brunson 3 they were saying the timing was dependent on when the ref motion for the foul, now they want to flip flop and say it’s when the first contact occurred. Nba has a very bad officiating issue.

So you wont 3 games, we never spoke about the refs. You lost a game, where to me you had the better of a poorly officiated games and now it's the refs??? You guys are such sore losers and poor sports... It's unbelievable. Add to that the fact that nobody on our side has complained about Butler's consistent flopping, and Adebayou breaking every screen setting rule there is. Butler flops 5x more than Smart. I think rn Jimmy's better at flopping than Harden ever was.

You’re blind as fuxk if you think Miami got the better of the officiating last night. That’s on you.

[Jasen777]

Soccer is worse. In the NBA bad calls might balance out some. In soccer a single bad call can easily amount to 1/3 (or more) of the scoring in a game, or a whole game power play.

[NoDopeOnSundays]

I have an easy solution to this problem - stop watching it.


I don't complain about things I can just stop viewing.

[FlatearthZorro]

Definitely one of the worst officiated games I’ve seen in a long time. No clue how Miami even had a chance to win it, the end game clock change was funny too. Game 2 against the Knicks when bam fouled hartenstein on the Brunson 3 they were saying the timing was dependent on when the ref motion for the foul, now they want to flip flop and say it’s when the first contact occurred. Nba has a very bad officiating issue.

So you wont 3 games, we never spoke about the refs. You lost a game, where to me you had the better of a poorly officiated games and now it's the refs??? You guys are such sore losers and poor sports... It's unbelievable. Add to that the fact that nobody on our side has complained about Butler's consistent flopping, and Adebayou breaking every screen setting rule there is. Butler flops 5x more than Smart. I think rn Jimmy's better at flopping than Harden ever was.

You’re blind as fuxk if you think Miami got the better of the officiating last night. That’s on you.

I pray Tatum gets 10 FTs in 4 minutes at the end of next game. Then we will talk again. And it's not even whether all of them are fouls or not, it's the fact that at the end of elimination games most refs stay away from it. This is the first time I see this. Hopefully, we will get this and then I'll ask you if it's fair or not.

[Salieri]

I cannot believe how bad the NBA is. How terribly officiated this sport is. It has to be the most embarrassing league in the entire planet. Not even FIFA is this bad.

I'm not going to address the possible homer takes and the prisoner of the moment part of your post, everyone else is doing that already.

But this part (and the thread title by extension) is provably wrong.

We can argue all day about the perceived ineptitude of NBA refs, but I don't think you have a leg to stand on if you're hinting that the average quality of an NBA ref is lower than that of a minor basketball league one, to keep it just within basketball parameters.

Reffing a basketball game is inherently difficult because of the amount of action going on every split second that is hard to notice. In that way, it's not very different from other team sports with a ball involved. The obvious example is football (european one), and it's the one I'm gonna talk about.

But, and this is what makes your assertion false, basketball refs have much lesser power to sway the outcome of a game because of the nature of high scoring.

Let's imagine a horribly reffed NBA game. Refs might have gifted one of the teams a total amount of 10 demonstrably unfair points. Maybe 15 if the reffing is exceptionally bad. Out of an average of 120-130 points, that's roughly 10-15% of the total score being able to be labeled as unfair.

In a bad reffed football game, the refs award an illegal goal to one team (or take away a legal one) and that is a MUCH higher degree of influence than an NBA ref could dream of having. One more (or one less) goal is the equivalent of 50 NBA points awarded (or taken away) in one fell swoop. And that's even before contemplating the very possible chance of the refs screwing up even more, whether it is with more goals or with unwarranted red cards that put one team in inferiority. It's just not a contest, football refs have the potential to be MUCH more harmful to the sport. And they fulfill that potential on a regular basis.

To summarize: no, NBA is not even close to being the worst officiated league in the world. I get your frustration because you're a fan of the sport and it pains you to see a bad reffing job when your favorite team is playing. But you can count your lucky stars if you're not a fan of a team playing in the European Champions League. Then you would know real pain and frustration.

[fansse]

Butler double dribbles and then launches himself forward in an unnatural shooting motion. Gets 3 free throws to go ahead with 3 seconds left.

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We can go back and forth doing this all day. With every NBA game in history.

Thank god White hit the game winner lol.. Butler was only going for the contact, 0 intent to shoot that shot, crazy that he got 3 FTs.

[BoonyPC]

Lets replace them with AI!

I'm not much of a fan of bagging refs too much. Yes they make calls that frustrate you at times but someone has to do it and they're only human. Let out your frustration and move on. I'd love to see all these sports try and survive without em.

[scrabbarista]

I would love for an independent organization to go out and do a full season assessment of refereeing. Every single game so the NBA can be held accountable or at the very least have a spotlight on them (how many bad calls, missed calls, who did them, etc….). I would love to see basketball be the best team wins again.

The thing is, most games are called very well. It tends to be the games that are high-leverage for the league's bottom line (as the league perceives it - sometimes I think they get this wrong!) that are egregiously manipulated.

Also, social media, etc., seem to be doing a better and better job of spotlighting officiating with each passing year. It's still a drop in the bucket of what would be everyone understanding the reality of referee incentives. (I don't mean direct financial incentives, I just mean what constitutes "a job well-done" in the eyes of the NBA). But awareness does seem to be at least trending in the right direction. Nonetheless, I don't believe large-scale, significant changes will ever occur. FIFA is the marker. The more money that goes into the league, the more corrupted the games become. The thing you have to understand before you can think clearly on this topic is that the league doesn't want games fairly officiated. At least, not certain games. They want to make as much money as possible, and they believe, probably correctly, that there are times when this objective necessitates an unfair whistle.

Also, I'm not sure there was ever a time when "the best team wins" was true. I've been following the league since the late 80's, watching on TV since the very early 90's, and I believe games have been manipulated at least that far back. Presumably, much further.

Again, though, I have to emphasize that I believe the majority of games - if you're just looking at sheer quantity, between regular season and playoff games - are very well called. This may begin to slowly tilt with the increasing pervasiveness of sports gambling, but the primary issue with officiating, in my opinion, is not gambling-related. It's more a question of money-making, star-making, market sizes, audience sizes, narratives, story lines, etc.. Or, in a word, profit.

[ITYSL]

Heat were in the bonus 3 minutes into the 3rd quarter. Butler took 10 FTs in the last 4 minutes of the game by flopping around like a fish. But yeah, the refs were rigging it for the Celtics. Please STFU

[brannigan73]

There are a lot of referee posts. Maybe we need a poll to find the worst of the whiny, "why is it always my team?', the league is rigged, posts. Might be a close race but this one gets my vote.

Its not about it being rigged its about them being bad consistently. Over time yes everyone feels the bite. But really there should be something in place so crazy stuff like the referees imagining extra time on the game clock at the end and deciding the outcome of the game to happen. There needs to be a remedy. A game cant end like that in 2023. Sorry it makes the NBA look Mickey Mouse. At the very least they should have to explain this to the media and take a hit like the players do for bad play. And whats this ridiculous crap with there being "about 3 seconds left". I've watched the replay a million times there is no way there was enough time left for the White tip in.