Sunday, June 20, 2010

NBA or WWE?

I know this is a Boxing / MMA site but I had to comment on the recent NBA finals between the Boston Celtics and the LA Lakers. I watched most of the series and couldn't help but note how often the referees were wrong when they blew the whistle. Based on my rough count over 80% of the calls were actually wrong! This is quite remarkable given the level of popularity of the sport. It seems the problem is that the sport is so fast and difficult to officiate now that most of the made calls are gut feel reactionary versus a ref actually seeing something. It's going to be hard for fans to continue to watch a sport that has basically no accuracy in officiating. I really have to hand it to the NBA marketing machine - they've done a great job to keep the fan base strong. I really don't know if this is much of a sport anymore though. The athletes are still solid but the sport needs to be fairly officiated in order to be considered a sport versus a drama like the WWE. Many WWE wrestlers are great athletes too. Too bad officiating always gets in the way but if you're less than 80% or heck even 20% accurate on calls than you're not really a viable sport anymore, in my opinion. Given the NBA's recent issues with claims of rigging games from a former referee it's probably in the league's best interest to do something about the officiating before this gets out of hand. Hopefully, someone will let me know how it goes because I certainly won't be watching any more NBA drama err games until this thing is cleaned up.

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