The Drubbing

The NBA foul-calling issues have ascended to another level. It’s completely out of control now. It’s not to the level of steroids in baseball, but it’s getting there (more on that in a few days). While the incessant reviews and posturing by the officiating crew working the Rockets vs. Lakers game is encouraging, because the ultimate goal is to get the calls right, the sensitivity towards personal fouls, technical fouls. flagrant-1 fouls and flagrant-2 fouls is an utter nightmare. This has been building through the playoffs, starting with the Chicago/Boston series, continuing in the Boston/Orlando series and the frontline has become the Houston/Los Angeles series.

For many people, the breaking point was the sensitivity towards the Sasha “Vujabitch” Vujacic. Only made worse by the inexplicable flagrant-2 and automatic ejection of Ron Artest after what some would describe as a “playoff foul” and I would argue that it wasn’t even hard enough to be called a “playoff foul”. There was no part of that foul that warranted anything other than a personal foul. And the foul itself could’ve been called on two players other than Ron Artest. There is nothing in the rule book that could possibly justify that foul as any kind of flagrant foul. In a rare moment of honesty and humility, even Kobe Bryant admitted that the play didn’t warrant a flagrant foul and went so far as to put the blame on the wording of the rules.

Something has got to change. And I don’t think the NBA can continue this way for the remainder of the playoffs without making some changes. In defense of the officials, with the exception of the Ron Artest ejection, they are trying to assess fouls as the league has instructed and as the rules require. And I understand that the Flagrant-1 and Flagrant-2 differentiation is a relatively new rule, so there is bound to be some ironing out that needs to occur. But this cannot continue.

It's time for the best commissioner in professional sports to step up and address the flagrant foul problems

As Ryan noted, the inconsistency may be the biggest problem. Players and fans will live with rules and calls they don’t like, if they’re enforced evenly across the board. But there is no way that Ron Artest can get a Flagrant-2 and be ejected for blocking Pau Gasol’s shot and hitting his arm, and Rajon Rondo doesn’t get a Flagrant-2 and ejection for his foul against Brad Miller. I personally believe that the right call was made against Rondo, and that the call against Artest is an egregious violation of the stipulations in the rule book. But there’s no reason for the far worse foul to get a far lighter call. Not to mention the fact that even the forearm shiver of Derek Fisher received a lighter in-game penalty than the Ron Artest foul.

Jeff Van Gundy perfectly illustrated the delima that NBA players face in every playoff game this year by asking the question,

When a guy goes up for a layout, what are you supposed to do in this league today?

For all that they routinely get wrong, the MLB did something right when they quickly instituted and instant replay system. They didn’t wait for the conclusion of a season. They saw a problem, they heard the cries of the players, team management and fans and made the right adjustment. Now Stu Jackson, David Stern and the NBA need to make some swift adjustments of their own.