My Favorite Article of The Year

I held out until the final day of 2008. And now I can proudly say that it paid off because Ian Thomsen of SI.com wrote the best persuasive piece of the year.

This might have been the worst official decision I have ever seen at a major sporting event.

[OK.]

[A] new threshold was established here Tuesday when the Portland Trail Blazers accidentally put six men on the court against the Boston Celtics. The sixth man scored a basket. The referees acknowledged that he should not have been allowed on the floor. And then they permitted his basket to stand.

[Alright. Perhaps it is just me. But my first question at this point is "What is the rule regarding a scored basket with more than five players on the court?" Before I get too fired up about an officiating decision, I like to know what the actual RULE is that governs the situation in question. Seems like relevant information.]

This event is the harshest sign yet that NBA referees are frazzled. Not all of them, of course: I believe there are some officials who would have come to their senses and made the right call, regardless of how the particular rule may or may not be written.

[OR we could take this rules-be-damned(!) approach which includes the added convenience of not having to look stuff up.]

I write this in the early morning hours without knowing exactly how the rule is written regarding this particular infraction.

[Professional. Journalism.]

What I do know is that the rule in this case is irrelevant.

[That's pretty much the opposite of true, right?]

This is a black-and-white case of right and wrong, and I wonder if the referees got it so badly wrong because they have been mismanaged for so long a time that they can't begin to tell right from wrong anymore.

[You know what makes a case black-and-white? Rules!]

I wonder if they're so worried about looking over their shoulders that they can't see what is in front of them.

[??!??]

The first rule of basketball is that each team shall play with an equal number of players.

[Actually that is Rule No. 3.]

Anyone can make the mistake of failing to count the players; the issue lies in what these game officials did next while trying to satisfy their supervisors.

[This also assumes that counting that basket in the 2nd quarter somehow satisfied the referee's supervisors... which also seems like a rather unsubstantiated and arbitrary claim.]

Am I making too much of what might have been a simple error in judgment?

[YES. Sidenote: I quickly skimmed the 2008-09 NBA Rules (linked above) and could not find a rule that governs this exact situation. As such, the explanation given by one of the referee's (quoted in Thomsen's article) seems reasonable. The rule (no more than 5 players on the court) is not applied retroactively-- which strikes me as the same approach for nearly every rule (instant replay situations notwithstanding). The point, however, is that it took me all of one 4-second Google search to find the NBA rules, and another 20 or 30 seconds to perform a keyword search. Thomsen? Not so much. And this is his job.]

Or am I right to wonder whether the league has so convoluted its referees that they no longer feel empowered to distinguish right from wrong?

[I give up.]

Have a safe and enjoyable New Year's, all.