The NBA in a sudden move has now instituted a new policy on player conduct as it pertains to fouls for the upcoming season. In the past we have watched NBA players have all sorts of emotional and heated responses to officials when they have a foul called on them. Apparently many fans do not like watching NBA players protest calls with the officials in the various ways they have tried to in the past, so as a result this rule comes about.
The way the rule is going to work is that basically if a foul is called on a player, and he has any outward emotional response to the call then a technical foul will immediately be called on the player. Let’s use an example Kobe Bryant gets a foul called on him and does his patented arms extended walk towards the officials to protest the call, well with this new rule Bryant would immediately assessed a technical foul. So the expectation of the players is if a foul is called on them then they should be quiet show no emotion, and just take it from the officials.
When this rule was created apparently several videos of the types of behavior that would fall under this rule includes things like air punches at the officials, rushing towards an official on a call even in a non-threatening manner. They have also done away with the “whatever” gesture that players typically use when concluding their argument with a referee, and let’s not forget the stare down of a referee. All of those behaviors will now draw a technical foul, and that means bad news for players like Rasheed Wallace who has already set NBA records for accumulation of technical fouls.
It is true that players complain far too often — especially in the playoffs, when poorly played games are rendered altogether unwatchable by badly behaved players who consistently take out their frustrations on the referees. But, that is all part of the entertainment value of the NBA, they are taking the line of the NFL and starting to remove emotion from the game. Emotion comes with competition the two are hand in hand, and forcing players to be docile robots who can’t get emotional about bad calls is a bad move.The reason this idea is going to make the games unwatchable is simple. First the officials will have to subjectively decide whether something is an emotional response or not, and call the technical foul based off of their own judgment. The officials in the NBA are horrible to begin with, which is why the players feel the need to protest calls so vehemently. If you ask anyone that watches an NBA game if something was a foul based on the NBA rule book you would get several different responses and hardly any consistency. The last point on this is it will just perpetuate the already existent class system in the NBA, do you really believe some young official is going to give Lebron James his second technical foul late in an important game because he showed emotion about a call?
The NBA has a problem here, if stars are constantly thrown out of games for protesting then people will feel cheated and stop coming to the games. If you don’t throw the stars out, but throw out “average” players then fans are going to be pissed off that the stars are getting a pass for the same behavior. The games may just be more unwatchable without the complaining when you have 20 technical fouls called every game, who wants to sit around and watch that? The NBA continues to be a poorly run league, David Stern seems to be so focused on trivial things like how players are dressed when they arrive at the arena, or players whining about referee calls that he has not focused on making the game better. The NBA has a balance issue with only about 8 viable teams, but yet that goes unnoticed for things like this. We will see what the season brings, but this rule is sure to be heavily enforced early in the season, but relaxed a bit for the playoffs.
