The Shrine

I watch basketball a lot, and I know everyone always complains about this when they lose. But after watching this season's playoff it strikes me that there are simply far too many leeway on every NBA game. If you're playing baseball you can't say someone struck out looking didn't really strike out. You can't call a too many men on ice penalty when there isn't too many men on the ice. Even football there isn't always a callable penalty on every play. Yet on basketball you can literally call almost anything you want on every play. It seems like every play there's a travel, charge, blocking, or all of the above involved.

It's almost like you need to get reputation as a 'good defense' team and then you'll notice a good defensive team doing the same thing another team do can get away that, but then this is offset by the fact that a team known for 'good offense' gets calls easier for doing the same thing. Then there's stuff like you know it's near certainty a referee won't call foul on the last play of the game unless you're trying to foul on purpose, which gives the defender considerable advantage if you're sure you won't get called for a foul since they got to let the play the final possession.

I think they need to invent robots smart enough to call fouls, since those guys won't be biased or intimidated by the crowd. I have no idea how feasible this, but I think something needs to be done about this. Maybe they need to just have 10 guys sit in a room watching replays all day and just phone the guys on court if they missed something (and it'd get applied). Yes I realize if they did half of the players will be fouled out by the 3rd quarter but it's precisely because there are so many fouls on every play that it becomes a huge advantage when even a small portion of them isn't called in one team's favor.

True, bias is a problem for basketball refs, but it's not isolated to basketball. While football doesn't have as many calls like that, it does happen. That's why coaches have the opportunity to gamble a timeout for a call challenge. Sometimes I wish basketball had the same deal, but then again, points don't matter as much in basketball, so coaches wouldn't risk their timeouts, anyway.

Personally, I always thought football had the right balance of points. Hockey doesn't have enough and basketball has too much. But, I digress and I can't claim to be a sports fan, anyway.

The football challenge isn't a bad idea. Say make each challenge cost you half a time out (either a 20 second timeout or downgrade a full to 20 seconds) if it's wrong. The biggest concern would be slowing down the pace of the game, since I imagine people will be challenging them left and right (teams would probably just have like 10 guys watching on their own screens and phone the coaches if they see something wrong), but then if there are so many bad calls that it'd disrupt the game flow completely then it's better to get it right then saying 'we screw so much let's just not worry about it.'

While there are more points in basketball, I see challenges used in football that doesn't directly related to points too (i.e. getting a first down instead of a turnover doesn't guaranteed you'll get points later) while almost every decision relating to a foul can lead to points, so I don't think the scale itself matters.

If you go to any basketball site pretty much the first thing after every game is 'refs rigged this'. Bias is part of the game but no other sports is bias blamed as being so important to the outcome of the game. You can't invalidate a home run, and even football is not trivial to overturn say a clean touchdown pass even if you're trying to rig the game. But in basketball just about anything short of an uncontested shot can be called as a foul either way.