Through two days of NBA playoff games, we have seen some horrendous officiating.
Blake Griffin basically got benched by the refs in Game 1 of the Warriors-Clippers series. Dwight Howard picked up his 6th foul late in last night’s Blazers-Rockets game on an egregiously bad call. Four players ended up with DQs in that game, which lasted a ghastly 3:21, featured 65 fouls and made quite a few East Coast viewers a little less productive today at their jobs.
Is this what we should expect for the remainder of the playoffs? Or will tonight, with Thunder-Grizzlies and Clippers-Warriors making up the postseason doubleheader, auger in a new level of tolerance?
Of the eight games played over the weekend, five featured at least 49 fouls called. And in the Clippers-Warriors game, there was no foul called on Draymond Green when he raked Chris Paul across the arms with 18.9 seconds left, causing a turnover that denied the Clippers a chance to go for the lead. That non-call was so unsettling that the NBA issued a statement Sunday admitting its error.
The hope here is that the refs calm down and let the players decide the game. Now that we are in the era of video replay, and with the refs heavily reliant on going to the videotape in the final 2 minutes of games, there is a severe lack of flow that I find highly problematic.
That was one topic of discussion in this interview with Noah Coslov of CineSport.