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It is difficult to quote Rasheed Wallace as an expert on anything except high-grade idiocy and foul-mouthed lunacy.
Normally that's the case, particularly when it comes to NBA officials. Wallace and refs get along like Scott McClellan and George W. Bush. In Game 5 against Boston, Wallace received his sixth technical foul of the postseason, meaning one more and Wallace will receive an automatic one-game suspension.
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| Is isn't just Wallace's opinion. What constitutes a foul keeps changing, Freeman says. (Getty Images) |
"All that (expletive) calls they had out there, with Mike (Callahan) and Kenny (Mauer) you've all seen that (expletive)," Wallace said. "You saw them calls. The cats are flopping all over the floor and they're calling that (expletive). That (expletive) ain't basketball out there. It's all (expletive) entertainment. You all should know that (expletive). It's all (expletive) entertainment."
Just in case you didn't get that, it's all expletive entertainment.
Fine. Wallace is a hothead. That's not news.
What is news is that Wallace is correct.
His methodology might be expletived, but his general assertion is not wrong.
This isn't solely about the Boston-Detroit series; this is about the state of game officiating in the NBA in general right now.
The officiating in this postseason has been some of the worst I have seen in many years of covering professional basketball.
It's not just officials failing to call a foul in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals. (The league later admitted the mistake). Perhaps the worst-officiated game of the year was Game 4 of the East finals. In that game, officials made a concerted, obvious effort to insert themselves into the flow. There were an incredible 65 combined free throw attempts (39-26 in favor of the Celtics) on 58 foul calls.
The game illustrated what continues to be a glaring problem in basketball: the lack of consistency of what is a foul. It changes not just game to game, but sometimes quarter to quarter.
"Our guys kept their composure through things, and I think we were in a situation -- yeah, there were some questionable calls, but I told our guys no matter what, we had to keep our aggressiveness," Detroit coach Flip Saunders said following Game 4. "That's how we play. I thought the game was called a lot differently tonight than the previous -- how many games have we played in the playoffs, the previous 15 games or whatever it was. I thought tonight there was a lot more ticky-tack stuff called, both areas, than there was in the previous games we had played."
