Why No Talk of Suspension?

After turning the ball over in the third quarter of Saturday night's game, a perhaps frustrated Dwayne Wade of the Heat proceeded to (i) grab Rajon Rondo and (ii) swing his legs under him, while throwing Rondo to the ground. It's Rondo's dislocated elbow that has gotten all the attention (with the video -- rated at least PG-13 -- here.)

Rondo got hurt on the play. Although he came back into the game, it's unclear whether he will be able to play tonight, in an important Game Four, and his one-armed effectiveness is definitely at issue.

Was Wade intended to hurt Rondo? It's clear that he intended to foul the Boston point guard, mostly like to prevent the kind of break-away that occurred later (after Rondo returned) off of a comatose Chris Bosh. (Although as Jeff Van Gundy notes on the telecast "the ball was already out of bounds.")

Moreover, it was not Wade's first foul, nor first overtly-aggressive play of the day, or the series.

In addition, the Heat themselves, doth protest too much after the game. Here's Wade: "We play this game as competitors..You never want to see anyone get hurt, no matter what it is, what kind of injury it is. Kudos for him for coming back." (emphasis added)

Wade yesterday: “It’s a physical game, the game of basketball is a physical game. I’m not a dirty player, it’s physical. Everyone falls to the ground, everyone gets hurt, people get up.”

Here's teammate LeBron James: "You definitehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifly don’t want to see anyone have freak injuries. The competitors that we all are, us against Boston, you definitely don’t want to see nothing like that happen. Injuries aside, you hope the best for him. You hope that it’s not as bad as it looked. You hope it’s not something that affects him long term."

Finally, Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra: “I’m not answering questions about that. I’m done with that. Moving on....It looked like a normal contact foul...[Rondo] just landed on it wrong. Those things happen. There was a lot of contact. Some of the plays were a lot more physical than that, where guys didn’t get hurt. Those are tough plays."

No flagrant foul was called on the play by the officials at the game. However, the NBA rule book permits the League Office to post-facto assess fouls as "Flagrant-1" or "Flagrant-2" fouls after the fact, making its assessment on factors including:

1. The severity of the contact;

2. Whether or not the player was making a legitimate basketball play (e.g., whether a player is making a legitimate effort to block a shot; note, however, that a foul committed during a block attempt can still be considered flagrant if other criteria are present such as recklessness and hard contact to the head);

3. Whether, on a foul committed with a player's arm or hand, the fouling player wound up and/or followed through after making contact;

4. The potential for injury resulting from contact (e.g., a blow to the head and a foul committed while a player is in a vulnerable position);

5. The severity of any injury suffered by the offended player; and

6. The outcome of the contact (e.g., whether it led to an altercation).

In the NHL, the players on the ice would tell an observer whether the foul (or hit, in hockey) was seen as a clean but unfortunate injury, or something more sinishttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifter. In baseball, we'd know the next time Wade came to the plate.

With no fighting, no beanballs, and no true enforcers in a post-Pacers NBA, the retribution -- if required by the Code of the Game -- will be more subtle. Celtics Coach Doc Rivers, perhaps already anticipating a tough-guy response from some of his players (mostly likely Kevin Garnett), tried to defuse the tension: "I don’t know if it was a hard foul...Let’s put it like this: He didn’t intend to hurt Rondo. I don’t honestly believe that 99 percent of cases in our league that the player ever intends to hurt anybody but he did. It just happens."

Notwithstanding Doc, watch what happens when Wade goes to hole tonight.

This series is about to get a lot more physical.

Bird on the Refs

Larry Legend weighed in this week on the problems of NBA refs:

I know our league has got the best officials in the world. I think overall they do a tremendous job. There are different ways that different officials officiate, but we should be very honored we do have the best.

Does that mean the NBA officials are the best basketball officials in the world?

Or, considering that Bird was talking about the problems that baseball umps had in the 2009 post-season, is he claiming that NBA refs are the best sports officials in the world?

Hmmmm..

Things That Make You Go Hmmm... (NBA Edition)

* Disgraced former NBA ref Tim Donaghy has written in book while in prison for the last year. After Triumph Books (an imprint of Random House) apparently bought the rights to the book last year, it is alleged that pressure from the NBA made them re-think, and ultimately decided not to go forward with the project. Deadspin has excerpts (also, in fairness, the source for the NBA-is-killing-the-book rumor) from the book, some of which are explosive (i.e., that refs regularly bet on games, or on events within the game that they had control over, like who would be the first to call a technical foul.)

The excerpts on fellow NBA referees are more damaging than any allegation of betting on NBA games. Here's what he has to say about Dick Bavetta:

Studying under Dick Bavetta for 13 years was like pursuing a graduate degree in advanced game manipulation. He knew how to marshal the tempo and tone of a game better than any referee in the league, by far. He also knew how to take subtle — and not so subtle — cues from the NBA front office and extend a playoff series or, worse yet, change the complexion of that series.

The 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings presents a stunning example of game and series manipulation at its ugliest. As the teams prepared for Game 6 at the Staples Center, Sacramento had a 3–2 lead in the series. The referees assigned to work Game 6 were Dick Bavetta, Bob Delaney, and Ted Bernhardt. As soon as the referees for the game were chosen, the rest of us knew immediately that there would be a Game 7. A prolonged series was good for the league, good for the networks, and good for the game. Oh, and one more thing: it was great for the big-market, star-studded Los Angeles Lakers.

In the pregame meeting prior to Game 6, the league office sent down word that certain calls — calls that would have benefitted the Lakers — were being missed by the referees. This was the type of not-so-subtle information that I and other referees were left to interpret. After receiving the dispatch, Bavetta openly talked about the fact that the league wanted a Game 7.

"If we give the benefit of the calls to the team that's down in the series, nobody's going to complain. The series will be even at three apiece, and then the better team can win Game 7," Bavetta stated.

As history shows, Sacramento lost Game 6 in a wild come-from-behind thriller that saw the Lakers repeatedly sent to the foul line by the referees. For other NBA referees watching the game on television, it was a shameful performance by Bavetta's crew, one of the most poorly officiated games of all time.

* While anyone who's ever watched an NBA game closely will tell you that particular refs can influence the flow of a game. Refs certainly have a role in other sports, as well, although their effect is rarely so pronounced -- or so discussed. Even when a baseball umpire misses a call (or two), it is seen as just that: a missed call. Not part of an orchestrated plan emanating from the Commissioner's office. (Indeed, the missed calls in this year's ALCS resulted in umpiring changes for the World Series. Missed calls in the NBA are treated with the transparency and openness of a failed Five Year Plan in the old Soviet Union.)

* Donaghy has creditability problems, no doubt. But Bill Simmons is a favorite of the league; his new book (The Book of Basketball) on the history of the NBA(*) is number one on the New York Times best-seller list, and his calls are taken by NBA Commissioner David Stern (see BOB, page 137, footnote 89)(**)

(*) - More to come on the BOB.

(**) - Referencing that Stern believes that the advent of cable TV had a bigger impact on 'saving' the NBA than the arrival of Bird and Magic; both events occurred around 1980] "How do I know this? I called the commish and asked him. We talked for 35 minutes."

* Simmons himself has written extensively on the problem with NBA referees, including during the playoffs last spring:

We still don't know why certain referees get assigned to certain games, why Bennett Salvatore always seems to be involved when a home team needs a win to change the momentum of a series, why Joey Crawford keeps getting assigned to Spurs games, why Danny Crawford keeps getting assigned to Mavericks games, why Bill Kennedy would get assigned to a big Celtics game only six weeks after an argument cost Doc Rivers money. We are told that referees don't matter, but that's the thing: They do...

One other thing to chart: Does the NBA "control" the outcomes of certain games by assigning referees with certain call patterns? For instance, the 2008-09 Celtics were the most physical team in the league. Let's say they were leading a series 3-2 and the NBA wanted a Game 7. Would it assign some of its most whistle-happy refs to that game? Or let's say the NBA needed Utah to pull out a must-win game at home. If it had one or two refs with a history of being intimidated by tough crowds, would it feed them to the wolves in Utah? So let's see this stuff on paper. We have hundreds of stat-obsessed lunatics tracking Derek Jeter's defensive range or unearthing new ways to rip off VORP; we couldn't find a few of them to pick apart officials and assignments?

* And in the BOB (page 131), here's Simmons on the 1977-78 season:

The bad luck extended beyond Walton going down: the league barely missed out on a Sixers-Nuggets Finals in '78 ("Thompson versus the Doctor!") and a thoroughly entertaining Spurs-Suns Finals in '79 ("Davis and Westphal take on the Iceman!") If Stern had been running the league in '78 or '79, you might have seen that decade's equivalent of Dick Bavetta or Bennett Salvatore reffing a few of those pivotal Spurs-Bullets, Sixers-Bullets, and Nuggest-Sonics games. And you know it's true.(FN 79)

(FN 79)- Four perfect candidates: Seattle at Denver, '78 (Game 5, series tied at 2); Philly at Washington, '78 (Game 6, Bullets leading 3-2); Seattle at Phoenix, '79 (Game 6, Phoenix leading 3-2); Washington at San Antonio, '79 (Game 6, Spurs leading 3-2). The less sexy team won all 4 of those games. Um, this never happens anymore. Not sure if you've noticed.

* Bavetta himself told the Orland Sentinel that he may retire at the end of the year.

* Unexpected retirements are an NBA tradition in the Stern era.

When Amazing Happens from 15 Feet

The NBA's playoff ad campaign is brilliant: a pianist plays stark thirds, an empty basketball court and arena slowly (thanks to a reverse-CGI) filled to life with Kobe to Shaq...Bird's steal...Magic's Junior Sky-hook.

There's one other "Amazing" highlight that brings the NBA's past to its future: Dr. J's swoop. For NBA fans of a certain age, it defined all that basketball could be -- power, mid-air acrobatics, and grace. That moment was seared -- thanks to countless replays -- on the mind of millions.

But who saw it live? Only the 18,000 or so in Philadelphia's Spectrum who were in attendance for Game Four of the 1980 Finals. For everyone else, the 1980 Finals were consigned to late night television -- speaking of amazing -- on 'tape delay.'

The NBA of the late 1970s was a much different league than the one declared "Fannnn-tastic" just a few years later. It was a league that had gone through the 1970s built on terrific teams (the post-Russell Celtics, Knicks, and Lakers in the first half of the decade, the immortal Blazers in 1977), but after the ABA merger, it was a with little defense, little charisma, and little fan support (the 1979-80 Lakers drew 582,882, good for 3rd in the League; the Lakers this season drew 778,877, a 33% increase in numbers, good for 8th in the League.)

But presented with two well-known (thanks to the 1979 NCAA Final) and marketable stars -- Magic and Bird -- the NBA turned to a star-based system. The teams became identified by single players, and thanks to the leadership of the two most prominent; renewed interest in college basketball created interest in the pro game, culminating with the 1984 draft (3 of the top 5 players were eventual Hall of Famers, highlighted by His Airness, and the other was Sam Perkins, who played in 1286 games(*)) and interest and attendance spiked, from 450,331 (10,983 per game) in 1979-80 to 641,616 (15,649 per game) ten years later.

(*-While NBA games played is not the only measure of a player to be sure, it's more games than every player drafted at #4 from 1985 to 1994 (Rasheed Wallace was the #4 in 1995, and he's still active. Inserting footnotes in the text -- Hat tip to Joe Pos.)

But as teams -- and marketing campaigns -- were built around stars, the league had to make some tricky choices. Fans came out to the stadium to see Michael, Dominique, and Isiah, and it wasn't doing anyone any good to see them on the bench with foul trouble.

More important -- and more ominous for the integrity of refereeing -- stars became subject to kid glove treatment. In 1979-80, the top five in free throws attempted were Moses Malone (#1), World B. Free, Dan Issel, John Drew, and Reggie Theus. Malone and Issel were legitimate stars (both are in the Hall of Fame), but the other three were good, but not great players who played in a total of 5 All-Star Games.

Contrast with 1989-90, where the top five in FTA is dominated by Hall of Famers (Karl Malone, David Robinson, the Chuckster, Jordan and Patrick Ewing.)(**) FTA per game were also up slightly during the period, from 56 per game in 1979-80 to 57 per game in 1989-90, although defenses were becoming more physical in the era of the Detroit Bad Boys.

(**- Analysis of one year's top 5 FTA may not make the argument airtight, but here's top 5/FTA in 1978-79: Free, Malone (HOF), George McGinnis, Cedric Maxwell, and Drew; here's 1988-89: Karl Malone, Barkley, Jordan, Moses Malone, and Hakeem, all HoFers)

Here's another set of data: in 1977, Dr. J led the NBA in playoff FTA with 7.05 per game (134 in 19 games; in 1978, Dennis Johnson led with 7.22 FTA per playoff game (159/22 games); in 1979, it was Elvin Hayes with 6.84 FTA per playoff game (130/19 games).

In 1987, Bird led the league with 8.39 FTA per playoff game (193 FTA in 23 games); in 1988, it was Adrian Dantley with 7.73 FTA per playoff game (178/23 games); in 1989, it was Jordan with 13.47 FTA per playoff game (229/17 games).

In 2007, LBJ led with 9.8 FTA per playoff game (196/20 games); in 2008, it was Kobe with 9.23 (194/21 games); and currently LBJ leads with 14.5 FTA (188/13 games).

Weighted averages among the leaders: 1977-79 = 7.05 FTA per playoff game; 1987-89 = 9.52 FTA per playoff game; and in 2007-09 = 10.70 FTA per playoff game.

But by focusing on stars, and protecting them around the basket, the NBA turned into a multiple-rule league: one set of rules for regular season; and one for the playoffs had long been established. But by allowing stars to roam free -- and rewarding them with trips to the line, the NBA went down the road of creating "stars" and rewarding them. The trend has continued to the present day with the ultimate peak (nadir?) being reached in the 2006 Finals, when Deee-wayne Wade put the refs in his Fave Five with 97 FTA in the 6 game Finals.

So while getting refs younger or more in shape or less subject to home crowds may help alleviate some of the criticism that the calls are getting throughout the Internets, its also true that the double-standard has yet to be addressed, and is argubly getting worse.

So it wasn't just that LBJ got bailed out at the end of regulation in Game Four in Orlando; it's that he knew he would.