Whistle Consistency: Two Major Concerns with NBA Officiating

So I've hesitated to write complaints about officiating in pro sports because I really am on the officials side most of the time. I'm probably in a minority of Houston Rockets fans that doesn't believe the team was maliciously stripped of advancement in the playoffs two straight years solely by referees. I personally think those complaints ignore deeper issues such as major players not hitting shots when they count and I even think the inconsistent calls can often be placed on players (more about that later). With that being said, I have really disliked trends in the officiating I've seen over the last two years in the NBA.

I have officiated at admittedly much lower stakes games than grown men being paid tens of millions of dollars a year to play basketball. Basketball is hard enough to officiate without fans breathing down your neck every play. So I'm going to try to give the officials the benefit of the doubt with specific calls and only address general trends and how I would like to combat them over the course of the next few years. My two major concerns are inconsistency of officiating during different times of games, seasons, and even post seasons and the inconsistency with how certain players are officiated in regards to technical fouls.

The second concern is a lot easier to address and I'm pretty happy to start with that one. Let's start with two players whom every time I watch them play I'm thankful I'm not an NBA ref. Draymond Green and Chris Paul are the poster children for terrible officiating. Their personalities are very combative towards officials. Recently Draymond even admitted recently per Timothy Rapp of Bleacher Report that

"... I realized I got to the point where I was doing more crying than playing. I'm sure it was disgusting to watch because I felt disgusting playing that way..."

Look Dray, I feel you. You were probably my favorite player to watch in the league from about 2014-2017. Dray, Pat Beverly, some retired guys like Bruce Bowen, Tony Allen and Ben Wallace who always looked like they cared more than everyone else are my favorite type of player. But, that became your reputation. The suspension in the finals versus the Cavs became a haunting reminder to the league that technical fouls could change the outcome of an entire year for a team. The refs quit blowing the whistle on you as much and you feel obligated to get away with as much as they let you so it's kind of spiraled.

Chris Paul is bad for different reasons. Paul uses his position as Players Association President to berate officials in and out of game. Luckily for basketball purist but not the Houston Rockets the refs called his bluff after game one of the second round this year and with the whining taken out of his toolset he was the key reason the Rockets fell to the warriors in six.

Another major concern about officiating stems from Paul's teammate James Harden. Harden drives the lane amongst the league leaders. He's also amongst the league leaders in contested three pointers taken. with that in mind his league leading free throws attempted makes sense. In fact if you look at basketball reference for this year you will see the top players in free throws attempted Harden, Antetokounmpo, Embiid, Griffin and Paul George are all physical players who spend a ton of time either in the paint or taking contested shots.

When these players are getting sometimes upwards of 18-20 free throws in a game some people complain and the refs quit calling fouls on them. However, thats the wrong thing to do. If they are getting fouled it needs to be called. The job of the officials is to make calls. If it deserved free throws in the first quarter of a regular season game the same action should deserve free throws in the fourth quarter of a playoff game 7.

Too many times this year what was a foul early was not called late. I would be ok if they didn't call it early and then didn't call it late. At the end of the day Basketball is hard to officiate. It's fast paced and there's so many ways that someone can violate the rules. So, the only fair thing we can ask for is consistency.