Comments on: Is NBA’s new crackdown on gestures robbing game of emotion?

By: PBT: NBA taking fun out of it with gesture crackdown - The Latest News and Reviews from Your Favorite Tweeter - Nba on Tweethaven

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 20:07:52 +0000

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By: smith5646

smith5646 — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 17:16:48 +0000

I too have officiated a number of games, mostly intramural and church leagues, where the guys like to play but can’t. paul1990 is 100% correct. It is a lot easier to do from the seats than from the floor.

Because it is VERY difficult to watch everything that all 10 players are doing at the same time and because I have often gotten screened from a play and didn’t see the contact, I never had a problem with players “gesturing” as long as it was appropriate / civil gesturing (giving me the bird was a severe no-no). Hands in the air to me was always a way of saying “Did you see what they just did to me?” That was what it meant to me when I played…either that or “I can’t believe that I just did that!”.

It is an emotional and frustrating game. Let the players have a civil way of expressing this emotion and frustration and let them play the game. Next thing you know, they will prevent smiling when things go right because it is taunting.

By: paul1990

paul1990 — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 18:50:28 +0000

I officiate a lot of basketball at the high school level and see the same actions by players and coaches. Let me tell you something…officiating basketball is harder than it looks. No one should ever be able to complain about officials on ALL levels until you officiated the game at least 8-10 times. Understand the rotations and how you can get screened off visually by another player in game conditions. If you’ve officiated that many games, then I’ll give you a seat and a beer and you can yell at me all you want.

By: zblott

zblott — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:57:29 +0000

More than anything it robs the non-glory teams of actually being able to express what they need to say when the refs are robbing them (think 2002 Kings-Lakers). Here’s an article outlining how bad it is:

http://www.hoopskarma.com/hk/2010/10/4/nba-empowers-refs-silences-players-hurts-fans-ability-to-kno.html

By: mustbenugs

mustbenugs — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:17:29 +0000

Seems like Daniel Stern tries something new every year at least once to try and ruin the game… he’s done a couple things leaning towards runing the game already this year.