The Pistons had their four-game winning streak snapped on Thursday in Dallas as the Mavericks pulled out a nail-biting 116-114 upset victory in overtime. During his post-game remarks to the media, head coach J.B. Bickerstaff stressed that his team didn’t lose the game solely because of the officiating, but aired out a number of complaints about the referees, with a focus on crew chief John Goble.
As Tim MacMahon of ESPN writes, Bickerstaff never explicitly called out Goble by name. However, he repeatedly cited calls made by the crew chief and told reporters that Goble said to him during the game, “Night by night, this is how our interactions are.”
“So, that says to me that the referee is coming into the game not being objective,” Bickerstaff said. “OK? That same referee, at halftime, I get my technical foul. I don’t say anything to him. I go to grab Cade (Cunningham) to get Cade off the floor. He gives me a technical foul. That’s my job to get my player away from the referee, get us back to halftime so we can have the conversations that we need to have.
“So, the same referee who comes into the game who’s not objective, and then he goes out and makes those calls. (That) same referee, if you take a look at the play where he ejects (Ausar Thompson), he steps towards A.T., right? That’s where the minimal contact happens, where he steps towards him and initiates it.”
Goble told pool reporter Christian Clark of The Athletic after the game that he assessed Bickerstaff with a technical foul for “continuous complaining” and that Thompson was ejected for “aggressively approaching and making contact with an official.”
Bickerstaff also wasn’t happy about the fact that he wasn’t awarded a timeout during the Pistons’ final offensive possession despite the fact that “that same referee” (Goble) was standing next to him.
“You had one guy who wanted to make the game about the referees when that’s not what this should have been,” Bickerstaff said. “This was two teams competing their tails off, playing high-level basketball. But anybody who comes into the game and says ‘night by night,’ he clearly has an unobjective point of view.”
Here’s more on the Pistons:
- In a subscriber-only story for The Detroit Free Press, Omari Sankofa II identifies three-point shooting, power forward depth, and a second scorer to complement Cunningham as three areas the Pistons should be focusing on as the trade deadline approaches. Sankofa also singles out a few players who could be targeted in trades to address those needs, including Lauri Markkanen, Sam Hauser, and Dorian Finney-Smith.
- Cunningham just turned 24 years old in September, but he has already emerged as the Pistons’ leader. Hunter Patterson of The Athletic traces Cunningham’s desire to lead back to his high school days, when he was the youngest player on his varsity team and felt like the “odd man out” among players who didn’t want him there. “Me and those guys have come to terms, and we’re all good now. But it was something that made me grow a lot,” Cunningham explained. “… I learned how to lead from that, learned how to make people feel how I wanted to be made to feel at that time. I think that was one of the first moments where I was like, ‘I don’t like how this type of leadership is, and I want to be better whenever I have that opportunity to be the best player on the team.’ So I always revert back to that team whenever I’m thinking about how a leader was (that) I didn’t like.”
- After finishing seventh in MVP voting a year ago, Cunningham has career-high averages of 27.2 points, 9.2 assists, 6.2 rebounds, and 1.4 steals per game so far this season. Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd said prior to Thursday’s game that the Pistons guard deserves to be an even bigger part of the MVP conversation this season. “When you look at the pace, his speed and his ability to control the game not just from scoring but passing,” Kidd said (Twitter link via Sankofa). “… He understands when it’s time to go. He should be mentioned with the MVPs, if not MVP right now, because of the high level he’s playing.”
Refs totally screwed Detroit. Obvious offensive goal tend on Dallas not called toward end of regulation. Pistons should have won in regulation.
Personally, I don’t like to talk about the refs too much. I think that refs miss calls as often as players miss shots. But they do that both ways, so it tends to even out.
But in that game yesterday I felt like Detroit were indeed screwed over.
I think this year the refs received new instructions and call more fouls in general. So it’s not surprising that their role in games has increased as well.
Sorry but referees should be held to a much higher standard. If you think that equating missed calls by officials to missed shots by a player is acceptable, then I don’t know what to say. If the referees are missing more than 10% of the calls, then they either need additional training or need to be fired.
It’s not about whether it’s acceptable or not.
The game is fast for everyone on the court, including the refs. A bump during a shot, a touch when the ball goes out of bounds, a piece of footwork near the line, it happens very fast, and players and refs can’t always keep up.
I was not a basketball player, but I boxed, on a decent level. I often felt screwed over or favoured in a match.
As a spectator, I’d sit at ringside, watch a match from meters away. I’d have an opinion that one guy scored more points or won more rounds.
Then I’d go home, watch a replay, with multiple angles and slow cameras, and change my opinion as those replays showed things I missed.
Players miss things, spectators miss things, refs miss things, commentators do too. Commentators actually have a lot of power to create perception. One of the reasons GSW fans whine so much about ‘unfair officiating’ is their local NBC commentators, who never fail to suggest that their team is getting screwed over, even when they don’t.
I remember how horrible Max Kellerman was when he worked on boxing matches and shouted stuff like ‘what a combination’ even though literally every punch in that combination landed on forearms or shoulders. That guy is as blind as a bat…
Anyway, the refs will make mistakes, and no amount of anger aimed at them will change it. Instead of doing that, it’d be nice if the league actually started applying general principles of officiating. For instance, one of those could be trying to reduce the role of refereeing in games to a minimum.
What do I mean by that? In the last playoffs, we’ve all seen a big increase in physicality. Many folks were saying that OKC, in particular, were allowed too much. This season, the number of foul calls has increased dramatically. It’s one of the reasons why the scoring is up (more FTs).
Basically, the league went ‘let’s call things that were not called in the playoffs’.
But it created a certain effect: the refs whistle more, the game stops more, the refs’ faces are taking more screen time, and their role and influence have actually increased. Players argue with them more than ever, audiences are more annoyed, etc. Which is not a good thing.
Good ref = invisible ref. Good refereeing performance = the game was decided by the players on the court, not by a whistle or a play review. But the league didn’t think of that when they changed the guidelines; this increased foul calling is a knee-jerk reaction to what we saw in the playoffs.
As for refs being more accurate, I always thought it’d be good if the refereeing body actually worked with the players on establishing new rules. Literally have them at practice, have them bump and get pulled by the players so that they get a better understanding of what is a foul and what is not. Cause right now it’s like the refs and the league are the only ones who are changing the guidelines based on their own ideas, while the guys who actually play have no say in it.
Good luck getting their union on board. Unions are a great thing until they aren’t (and because they rarely punish negligent parties).
Peter… Horrible analogy/comparison.
Please don’t compare shooting with officiating.
On a GOOD day, a player will miss 50% of their shots.
Are you saying that we should be ok with games that 3 referees miss 50% of their calls?
That should be the bar for officials… 50% correct calls???
Or just your bar?
Perhaps it wasn’t the best analogy. :)
But they do make mistakes like everybody else. The players sometimes make awkward moves and step out of bounds or travel. The refs can also take an awkward step, don’t get a good angle on the action and make a bad call. Maybe that’s a better analogy.
And yeah, they don’t have to handle the ball and also compete with a 6’7 200 lbs uber-athlete while doing that, but the game is just as fast for them as for the players, and they make bad calls.
Bickerstaff has proven he is a good coach. Cleveland will regret firing him.