UCFJayBird wrote:-= original quote snipped =-
I'm seriously just waiting for the day that a player gets so fed up on the court (and I mean a big time player), that they just walk right off the court and into the locker room without saying a word. Or when they get to the podium they just blast off on the officials and it's all over ESPN.
I'm just waiting for it. I think it'll happen eventually. However I have noticed that the emotions of a fan and a player differentiate hugely. When playing I would never get as upset as I would be watching. Watching i'd say "i would kick the ball, get a T, I don't care. Show em I think their full of it" but on the court I'd just shake my head and maybe say a word or two and then go back to playing.
If one of our players did that, someone on this board would say they need to just stop complaining about the calls and play harder. We've seen that at least a hundred times this season for much lesser displays of emotion.
It's really tough to know how the players can win. Did anyone catch the end of the Warriors-Lakers game on Monday night? On the very last game of overtime, the Warriors were trying to inbound the ball to get off a shot to tie the score or hit a 3 to get the win. The players all lined up and when the Warriors started to inbound the ball, the players all ended up locked up like they were NFL linemen. Derek Fisher literally pulled Monta Ellis on top of him. Ellis was charged with the foul. Fisher hit the free throws and the Warriors lost the game. It had been a darned good game until that happened. At the very least, it should have been a no-call. The refs stole that game from the Warriors.
I mean...what do you do? The better teams almost always get the calls. Sometimes, players get injured because the refs let the games get so out of hand, and sometimes you can't get close enough to breathe on a guy or you're hit with a foul. You're told you have to earn respect. Basically, it comes down to whether the refs like you or think your team is important enough to deserve the calls. You can bite your tongue forever and not get respect. If you don't ever say anything, they're likely to keep calling fouls against you. But if you complain, you'll get told to stop whining, and the refs will point their fingers in the opposite direction when you approach them or tell your coach that they don't want to hear another word out of him (so much for the refs respecting the players and coaches). That has happened to the Magic several times in the past couple years.
Unless you're one of those teams that always gets the calls. you just cannot win. This is something that the league always has needed to fix and never does. I can honestly say that I have left more games angry (and finished watching more games of other teams on TV angry) because the officiating dictated the outcome of the games -- not the players -- than I have left angry because of poor play by the team I was rooting for in that game. (Obviously, I'm not a Knicks fan.)
By the way, I just want to say that I am not talking about tonight's game in particular. I was unable to see the game tonight. It's just a general observation. I was still mad about the Lakers-Warriors game, and I had no dog in that hunt.
