re: “Rockets’ Game 1 ref rage rooted in extensive Warriors research”

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No they didn’t. What most likely happened is that Golden State sent in tape of Harden getting some foul calls on his step back that were flops, and told them to watch for it.

And the refs swallowed their whistles in game 1 even though several times he was legitimately fouled.

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What it looked like to me was the moment was too big for the refs last night. They had 3 very late whistles in one quarter and others throughout the game. You’ll see less than one late whistle a night during a regular season NBA game on average. They also had no idea how to call Harden because of the amount of acting and contact creation he uses. GSW took advantage of officials that shouldn’t be reffing what could essentially be the NBA Finals by making the refs decide if it’s a flop or not. That’s not an easy task to accomplish, and it was half-genius, half-dirty.

I’m just glad this is starting to come to a head a bit finally. Silver’s excuses on the declining ratings throughout the season show such a willful ignorance. Disliking the aesthetics of the NBA product is finally a reasonable opinion.

It’s just really, really frustrating to see this collection of talent in the league lose ratings. You’re fricking up NBA. They have FOUR teams out East that could legitimately beat this GSW team (comprised of two MVPs and 2 more All Stars) instead of half a team a year ago(basically can lebron drag a bunch of crap past GSW).

That’s not because GSW got a lot worse. That’s what happens when you add legitimate stars to a conference already on the upswing.

The NBA simply is not even close to optimizing the skill level of play right now.