Awful Post Season Officiating: As Seen In Score Atlanta

The officiating in the NBA Playoffs has been dreadful. It’s actually been worse than dreadful. Dreadful would be offended to know that NBA officiating was compared to it. Seriously, it’s one of the main topics of conversation among both hard core and casual basketball fans alike. We can literally tell how good or bad of a night it’s going to be once they announce who is officiating the game. Here’s a small list of names you DON’T want to see officiating your favorite team’s playoff contest (especially if your team is playing Lebron James). Joey Crawford, Mark Wunderlich, Danny Crawford, Tony Brothers, Steve Javie, Dick Bavetta , and Violet Palmer just to name a few. Stan Van Gundy wants people who have columns to write about the officiating because we won’t be fined $25,000. I’m only too happy to oblige. There’s always been favoritism towards the superstars in the league, but they’ve taken it to a whole new level of ridiculousness this postseason. The coaches and players can’t say too much because they’ll be fined which is absolutely insane. Someone should be able to say the officials were particularly terrible without being disciplined. The league has made it so the officials are free from criticism. They never have to stand up and be held accountable for their awful performances. They get to make one egregious call after another with no repercussions. It must be nice to have a job that you can blatantly suck at and not be fired for it. We should all be so lucky. You would think at this point in the playoffs only the best of the best would be allowed to work, but apparently they’re just going with the usual suspects. I don’t know what kind of grading scale they use to assess the officials performances, but it needs to be reevaluated because if these guys they’ve been trotting out are the best of the best then the league is in serious trouble. The officials have become bigger than the game and no league can survive that, not even the NBA

Sixers or Heat

Who do you think the Hawks match-up better against?

My thoughts on this don't even concern the match ups. I'm more concerned with how the NBA thrives.
I would rather play the Sixers because I honestly think the prospect of a LeBron vs Wade second round would be too enticing for the league to pass up. I'm not saying they "fix" games. I'm just saying we all know the kind of preferential treatment superstars tend to get and Wade is one of the more preferred in the league. I remember watching him skip to the free throw line 20 something times in the Finals against the Mavs. If they'll officiate him like that when the whole world is watching, then you know they'll give him a bogus call or two when only one coast is watching.
Having said all of that, I honestly think the Hawks are the 4th best team in the East and they should beat whomever they play in the first round (with home court advantage)
What are your thoughts?

Say It Ain't So Joe.

I felt sick when Joe missed that possible game tying free throw, so I can only imagine how he felt.

The officials were just ridiculous in the third quarter, but of course no one will mention it...... except Drew.

I have never seen a player fall down (Paul Pierce) and an official call an official timeout instead of a travel. Ever. Ever. Ever.

I have never seen someone dribble and then dribble again (Garnett). and then get a foul call against the Hawks.

Something Rajon Rondo said that couldn't be more true... "If they played everyone else the way they play us they'd be a top five team."

I have to mention a few things about Josh Smith and the fans view of him. It's no secret that I'm a Josh Smith fan. Not the delusional type, but I do want him on this team. That being said, sometimes I'm sure I can come off as sort of a Josh Smith apologist. That's not what I'm going for at all, but I think he takes an unfair amount of blame for a lot of the things that are wrong with the team.

Do we want Josh out there jacking up shots outside of 12-15 feet? No, but it's going to happen from time to time. The problem I see is that fans seem to only have a problem when Josh takes a bad shot. No one says anything when Flip is out there shooting at will. Everyone just accepts that this is what Flip does. What's that about? I could go on, but the point I want to make is that Josh is not the only player on the team who takes bad shots. He has plenty of company in any given game.

Every shot Joe takes is not a good shot. I know that may be a hard pill for some folks to swallow, but when he has two guys on him and he has to spin and fade away just to get the shot off, not a good shot.

And, if the Hawks ran some semblance of a fluid offense Josh wouldn't even be in a position to take some of the bad shots he takes. They dribble too much, way too much and the play doesn't even develop until there's only a few seconds left on the shot clock. That alone leads to a lot of the bad shots that numerous players on the team take.

I'm not making excuses for Josh, but it does irritate me that people look at him as one of the biggest problems on the team.

It's like the inconsistent rotations, poor clock management, bad play calling and other countless offenses have nothing to do with what plagues the team.