My thoughts on “The Foul”
The foul that shook the series. I agree with the NBA that there definitely was a foul on the last play of Game 4 between the Lakers and the Spurs. The Lakers were in the penalty so this should be a two shot foul and not a three shot shooting foul since Brent Barry wasn’t in the act of shooting. The referee Joey Crawford should have called this but surprisingly there was no call. I also hated that Reggie Miller and Kenny Smith said Barry needed to flop to sell the foul. What kind of league is it where we encourage players to flop. Barry could have taken the shot through Fisher to draw the three shot foul but he didn’t and a two shot foul should have been called regardless of the situation. A lot of people also point that the Spurs coach and players were okay with the call after the game but that’s just the Spurs keeping it classy. I think they talked about what they were going to say before doing any interviews, its just the way they handle things. Not like Kobe Bryant who immediately says there was “No foul” before even watching a replay. He could have easily said he didn’t know, but no. His arrogance controls his mouth.
Not only did they miss the final call of the game but they also missed Tim Duncan’s travel that got himself a dunk, not to mention the play that didn’t reset the shot clock and forced Kobe Bryant into a desperation shot. All bad officiating.
So there were missed calls all over this game, and there are missed and phantom calls throughout the NBA playoffs. I’m starting to think the NBA needs to start rethinking how to officiate the game. If officiating is about getting every play right, I think they need to start using video replay a lot more and getting more angles on each play. Imagine an NBA game where the refs can replay every play from every angle using a hand held device. Yes this is wishful thinking but wouldn’t it greatly minimize the missed and phantom calls. I would even support having more officials at every game to get every angle. Just do something to improve the officiating.
Even in the Celtics and Pistons series we saw a PJ Brown flagrant foul and a Paul Pierce tackle that was called a legal foul. Pierce clearly did more damage than PJ Brown but somehow avoided the flagrant foul call. This also brings us to question whether certain players get more calls going their way than others. I’m not going to go there today.
I’ll wrap this up by bringing this back to the Lakers and Spurs who play Game 5 tonight. The Lakers won Game 4 because they played better. Manu Ginobli played horrible and Tim Duncan and Brent Barry carried their team. If this game ended cleanly it would have been fine but now its like the asterisk next to the New England Patriots. The NBA admits that the right call was not made during the game but why didn’t they see that in the replay before the players left the court, and why would they announce the missed call two days after. It’s like when a buzzer beating shot is made to win the game the players can’t leave the court until the video review is done.
The NBA needs to clean up the game starting with the officiating.
