Officials miss two game-changing calls: obvious Kendrick Perkins goaltend and blatant moving screen by KG

The NBA Playoffs started this weekend, and basketball fans were treated to a series of outstanding games. As Steve recounted last night, the pinnacle of opening weekend craziness occurred Sunday afternoon when the top two seeds in the Western Conference fell on their home floors.

A terrific round of Game 1s was marred by only one thing, the one thing that often mars otherwise great NBA competition: officiating. In particular, there were two calls in late Sunday games – one in the New York-Boston game and one in the OKC-Denver game – that were simply unconscionable, and both had huge impacts on who won and who lost.

First, let’s look at the Boston-New York game.

Many of you may think I am going to discuss the offensive foul call on Carmelo Anthony. I am not. That was, in fact, a foul; and I do not agree with the “refs should swallow their whistle late” theory. In fact, I think that’s pure idiocy.

So if you’ll indulge be for a moment…

A foul is a foul is a foul is a foul. Whether it’s at 11:59 in the 1st quarter or :02 in the 4th quarter. If you are going to judge all 4th quarter foul calls based on some subjective criteria for what “should” be a foul in a late game situation, then you effectively have given up your right to bitch about or critique officiating, because subjectivity is just that: subjective. What is a foul to you may not be a foul to someone else, so who are you to say what is and is not a foul as if you are somehow the only arbiter of such decisions? This is why we have rulebooks and objective definitions for what is and is not a foul, and nowhere in the rulebooks are there separate foul definitions based on the time of the game.

Deep breath. Needed to get that off my chest though because it boggles my mind how many people subscribe to this idiotic and illogical notion, yet still will bitch about officiating.

So no, I’m not here to critique the officials making the correct call on Anthony committing an offensive foul. Rather, I am here to rebuke the officials for missing one of the most blatant moving screens in the history of basketball.

Watch:

Seeing as how that shot by Ray Allen won the game for Boston, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the no-call by the refs on KG’s moving screen had a huge impact on deciding the outcome of this game. Yet, I heard nary a peep about this on ESPN this morning or on the radio driving in.

It just goes to prove the principles laid out in the book Scorecasting, that officials will always get less scrutiny for a bad no-call than they will for a (seemingly) bad call – and in this case, the Carmelo call wasn’t even bad!

The other horrible call I want to highlight is one that I have not heard anyone argue about because it’s simply an awful, indefensible call. I do not think there is any argument that Kendrick Perkins committed offensive goaltending here. George Karl is upset about it, and he has every right to be.

In case you are not convinced by the video, here is a rather convincing image:

Image source: TwitPic via Reddit

Even Thunder fans are readily acknowledging that this call was terrible.

Do officials need to be perfect? No, of course not. But these two calls – KG’s moving screen and Kendrick Perkins’ obvious goaltend – are atrocious misses that had significant impacts on the outcomes of close games. If these calls are made correctly, there is a good chance that all four road underdogs win on Sunday. That is astounding.

Yes, the NBA continues to be a place where amazing happens. For better or worse.

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