The Drubbing

Finally, the NBA has responded to the cornicopia of confusion surrounding the personal and flagrant fouls calls in the NBA playoffs. And fortunately for everyone, they’re not going to change anything or improve the situation. On Monday, Stu Jackson told the Associated Press:

“I look at it as opportunity for us to further educate the players as well as the coaches in terms of what a flagrant foul is. Certainly the league office has consistently communicated to both the competition committee members, as well as the teams, on an ongoing basis as these fouls occur.”

I think the players and coaches are telling a very, very different story.

“But if there’s still some uncertainty with respect to what is a flagrant foul, what’s a suspendable offense and what a hard foul is, then it’s incumbent upon us here at the league office to do a better job going forward of educating everyone.”

Really Stu, further education? Why don’t you try explaining it for the first time, because I’ve read the rule book, and it’s unbelievably vague. Shane Battier will back me up on that, and he graduated from Duke University. Jackson went on to explain that much of the owness for determining these fouls lands on the individual officials.

“Certainly with respect to flagrant foul penalty ones and all fouls in general, the referees have to make decisions in split tenths of a second. When you’re evaluating the severity of the contact, that’s a daunting task and isn’t always easy to do. That’s why the league office evaluates flagrant fouls postgame to confirm them.

Throughout the season I spend an inordinate amount of time speaking with teams, primarily GMs and coaches, when they inquire about flagrant fouls as to the reasons a given play was evaluated the way it was. But if there’s still uncertainty, we need to do more.”

But if the officials don’t even know what is an isn’t a flagrant foul, then how are the players, coaches, GMs and the people that pay for the NBA, the fans going to understand? Giving the refs the benefit of instant replay for these calls is great, and it helps them try to get the calls right, which is most important. But if they can look at a call over and over and over again, and still make a completely different call from one night to the next, then that’s a problem. And that tells me that the NBA hasn’t communicated very well with the officials. The league postgame evaluation is a nice touch, but that doesn’t do teams any good when a star player is ejected before the conclusion of the game. 

Stu, stop patronizing the entire NBA community. Nobody, and I mean nobody has a bloody clue as to what’s going on with the personal and flagrant foul rules. Not the officials, not the players, not the coaches, not the GMs, nobody. So start writing up some clarifications to the rules. No one is complaining about having the personal foul and flagrant foul rules. It’s just that no one understand them. A little clarity will fix everything.