Thank you to Kyle Ingram for inspiring me to write this piece. 

His post on “X”:

“People will say “LaMelo needs to attack the rim more” or “He needs to figure out how to draw the foul” when the refs allow defenders to grab & push him “

He’s 100% right. If the refs won’t call it and he pushes to get the foul call by driving over and over, especially this season, he would have been on the injury report more than in the game. It’s sad. We would have the whole team injured before the officials would call a foul, putting us back at the bottom of the standings. 

That is the latest problem this season. We turn the franchise around and the NBA still refuses to call an even and fair game. It’s almost like they just keep reminding themselves that all of our dark years is our own reality and can’t let the REAL reality that we are now a good team exists

Refs can now, more easily than ever, control the game flow, game speed, dynamics on the floor, foul trouble of one team over another, number of foul shots attempted…it is not a good scene.

Watch a college basketball game and an NBA game.

College games, usually, the players get to play. Some contact is allowable. Basketball is a physical sport, but referees have to be consistent from start to finish, and a game that has tempo and flows is good, physical basketball.

Today’s NBA has turned into a game full of floppers. Players so desperate to shoot foul shots instead of showing strength and skill to score the ball. Play solid defense and have officiating be neutral. You have to allow the defense to play defense and make the offense play offense.

I honestly do not know how college players adapt to the NBA because college basketball is more like the NBA used to be than anything else. It’s happening in every sport anymore. I love basketball. I loved seeing teams battling it out, having some contact on plays, being physical. I want the teams to play hard and determine the outcome. I do not want the officials to control the game outcome. 

Imagine in the NCAA finals,  when the coach for Connecticut had his face locked against the ref’s. That ref calls a tech and the foul shots determine the outcome. It didn’t happen and than God it didn’t. The NBA is a lot more subtle with their abilities, but they are getting sloppy. It’s easier to see favoritism to teams with more stars, with more popularity. The NBA is a business. Pro sports are businesses. They determine where to draw the lines between the skill of the players and the team’s ability to win or lose games. There’s more money in seeing Shai’s Thunder or Wemby’s Spurs playing Tatum and Brown’s Celtics, or Brunson’s Knicks than seeing a team like the Charlotte Bobcats…I mean Hornets, battle the Portland Trailblazers for the championship. 

Both teams have talented players and it would be fun to watch 2 young teams battle it out, but they aren’t the mainstream teams that have been on pedestals for years. The current pedestal teams have the NBA’s present “stars” on them, but even with the NBA draft putting college superstars on teams with the worst records, how would we ever see them play? The Hornets and Mavericks have had the best 2 players from the draft on the floor this year, battling for rookie of the year honors. The difference for those 2 is that one team is still gathering talent and the other one finally avoided the injury bug, established amazing chemistry, and started playing selfless, TEAM basketball. The result is that one team has been battling and clawing to make the playoffs for the first time in forever, and the pedestal teams have had to play starters against them at the end of the season in hopes of getting them out of the playoffs and the play-in.  Why is that? Because the Hornets have BECOME A FORMIDABLE THREAT IN THE NBA! No one wants to face us in the playoffs. The only way to keep us out is nights of 5 on 8 basketball, and even some nights, that hasn’t been enough. People will call me a “homer” in reading this. Just stop. I am a homer, but I’m realistic. If we were bad, I’d say we were bad and didn’t belong in the playoffs. I’d say we have been lucky we are where we are. I’ve watched a 7-win season and wrote 59 game recaps on how and why we lost. Not once was it just because of bad officiating. Talent is here. Chemistry is here. True team basketball is here. We have off nights, awkward lineups (which are sometimes necessary for many reasons), and we will lose games, but more often than not, we lose games because the refs swallow the whistle when we are on offense, or can’t stop blowing the whistle when we are on defense.

Sorry guys. I really thought about writing a game recap, or some sort of feel-good about our team and players, but I am choosing to point out what the league has become, and to share that one of the biggest drivers of the NBA Draft, the regular season, the playoffs, and the champions, are the NBA officials and the business…I mean team owners.

In the end, money talks and BS…well, you know.

Congratulations to the Greensboro Swarm on the G-League championship. Glad to see that in the G-League, they let teams, players, and talent determine the champions, and you guys 100% earned it.