Dwyane Wade on the NBA's late-game referee reviews: 'I hate the two-minute reports'
We’re dealing with sports here. Silly stuff where “bad for your favorite team” often gets passed off as “bad for the game” in the midst of a heated back-and-forth about what is, in the very end, still sports.
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The target this time is the NBA’s policy of releasing “Last Two Minute” reports, which in moderate detail discuss the calls gone right and the calls gone wrong in the last two minutes of close games. The league releases these reports in a constant, very public stream, but they’re rarely noticed until the referees produce a boner of a game.
And notice turns to full on outrage once a star gets his hold of the reports, following a bad night out for the refs that dared rub his team the wrong way.
The Chicago Bulls were legitimately denied a fair shake against the Denver Nuggets last week, in a Tuesday night performance that saw several calls go against Chicago down the stretch of the Bulls’ 110-107 loss to the Nuggets – Chicago’s 10th straight loss in Colorado. Jimmy Butler was denied both a trip to the free-throw line and a deserved charge call at the other end …
… which the NBA was quick to point out the next day in its report revelation.
Bulls star Dwyane Wade, because he can, went on to let everyone know that he was sick of all that transparency and extra knowledge:
“I hate them. I hate the two-minute reports. I’ll go on record saying it again,” Wade said following practice Monday at the Advocate Center. “It’s bad for our game to come back with those two-minute reports.”
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“They come back and show the imperfectness of our game in two minutes,” Wade said. “But it’s imperfect the whole game. Let’s not break down the last two minutes, as players get called out and fined for saying stuff to the refs but the NBA is calling our refs out for making the wrong play or right play. Let’s just leave it alone.”
Ah, wake the children and alert them as to the prospect of brighter times ahead, as the famed cry behind all marks of progressive thinking has rung out yet again: Let’s just leave it alone.
Omnisport’s Jordan Heck, siding with the star, went on to rail against the “hypocrisy” of the league fining players whose postgame thoughts about the work of the referees might align with the eventual findings of the L2M reports:
If Wade criticizes the ref publicly, he’ll be fined $25,000 (which appears to be the going rate) or up to $35,000. But it’s somehow okay if the league does the same. The funny part is Wade might even get fined for making the exact same comments as the reports.
Not untrue, but ultimately more gear-grindin’ for the Modern Age.
Wade, and any other star who goes on the record regarding the L2M reports, has no interest in the findings of the reports until they directly discuss the blatant calls that went the wrong way against their team – and, in Wade’s case, the calls down the stretch of the team’s loss to Denver were off in more ways than two.
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It’s akin to someone poring over the local newspaper when it publishes its health and safety findings for local restaurants, quick to skip to the part where the paper discusses any findings for their favorite restaurant … or, more likely, one that may have recently wronged them via bread or bill or both.
There’s no “hypocrisy” in working to achieve an on-record party line in a private league. No players’ First Amendment rights are being threatened by the league’s move to fine players for offering their editorial work post-game. The players themselves are not watching as their move toward free speech is being stunted by the big, bad NBA here; the players and their union happily signed off on the collective bargaining agreement’s notes about these sorts of fines on their way toward coming to agreement on all those guaranteed salaries and such.
No player has a livelihood in danger due to his repeated remarks. The NBA – a private league that no player has a right to play in – wants to streamline its message in all areas. Including the part that discusses the referees, when they screw up.
A part of the process that the referees themselves, you’ll recall, don’t want out in the public. The referee union is just doing its job in shielding its constituency from further ridicule in calling for the abolition of the L2M reports, which is fine.
That doesn’t mean the NBA should curtail its attempts at providing the consumer with more information about its league. More insight and transparency is always a fantastic thing, most would agree, unless lawyers (in the case of the referees union) and the elite (Dwyane Wade) are involved.
Does the NBA’s insistence on keeping the reports to merely the last two minutes of close games look a little ham-hock? Sure. That doesn’t mean they should take the things away entirely.
The reports don’t make life any sweeter when they confirm what we already suspected, but that hardly means we should limit their influence. The point is to get smarter, one missed whistle at a time.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!