NBA Officiating: Don't Hate the Refs, Hate the Game

When human beings are heavily invested in particular events, they seek to establish order where there might not be any.

LeBron James comes up short at the end of a close game not because his decision to make the right play happened to backfire, but because he is inherently unfit to close. The NBA draft lottery ping-pong balls favored the New Orleans Hornets not because of a coincidental outcome of randomized numbers, but due to an elaborate conspiracy.

And, most topically: The NBA's officiating crews aren't human beings asked to make an insane number of difficult decisions with complete accuracy, but are uniquely horrible at their jobs, and probably scheming against your favorite team. 

Both conference final series have been dominated by talk of the officiating. The Celtics, Heat, Spurs, Thunder and all of their fans have criticism of the referees on the tip of their tongues, as each and every team involved has apparently been wronged by blown calls. 

To an extent, that's accurate. Officials miss a lot of what goes on in the average NBA game, from an overlooked extra step to an unseen shove. Basketball is a sport with a ton of incidental contact, and when just three men—fittingly clad in gray—are asked to separate one marginal shade of physicality from another, it's inevitable that some fouls and non-fouls will be met with the wrong call.

But most of what we've seen has been in the acceptable range of human error. These referees aren't out to get one team or another (save for Joey Crawford and his bizarre relationship with Tim Duncan and the Spurs, perhaps). They are merely tasked with an impossible job.

The speed of the NBA game is lost on the average television viewer. We have the benefit of an optimal angle, slow-motion replays and a lack of obstructions as we watch comfortably from our couches, but the visible scope for the average on-court referee is far more limited, and the actions far more blurry.

Referees are asked to assess the actions of every player on the court in real time with absolute certainty, and though a bigger deal is made out of every officiating misstep today more than ever before, that doesn't make their failures unique or even unacceptable.

The officiating could certainly improve. No one is infallible, after all, but there's also no reason to think that today's officials are in any way corrupt or inept. They are just put in a position where they can't possibly win and live in an age where every mistake made is a mere YouTube search away.

That may not necessitate your pity—these men are all officials by choice—but responses fueled by anger alone could certainly benefit from a bit more perspective.