spartz

The lakers lost last night. The series is 2-1 for the pistons. I hate the lakers. I respect Karl Malone, (don't like him though) think that Gary Payton is worthless, Shaq is on his own planet (and the referee's refuse to call the game like it's supposed to whenever he is on the floor) and Kobe has apparently been showing his true colors the last year or so.

Conspiracy theory? I don't buy into a full blown conspiracy (although it's probably not out of the question)- but I do think that referee's are political animals and can be swayed, convinced, and prone to have misconceptions about players.

I've refereed before and some of the toughest things to do is to give the guy who just screamed at you the benefit of the doubt in the next play down the court when someone bumps his elbow in the shooting motion. Yes, it was a foul, but he just hurt my feelings yelling at me. Why should I help him now? It's just natural human instinct I think. The professional referee's have even more to fight against. EGO. They are supposed to be the best referee's on the planet. For some stupid reason somewhere along the line referee's like Steve Jaavy for the NBA now think that THEY are a part of the game. I honestly think that they want people to notice them more. So they try to show players up on the court, they hold grudges, give the other team calls when they clearly shouldn't, etc.

And for the love of the game, I am still waiting on one of the most important rules of the game - The Rule of Verticality - to be called. The rule states that you have an imaginary plane in front of you- that runs from the floor to the ceiling. If you are playing defense, and you are straight up and down (not breaking that plane forward) then the offense CANNOT move through you or knock you out of that plane. It's supposed to be a foul. It's in the rule book. It's nearly never called.

Same thing with the strike zone in baseball. There is a very clearly delineated strike zone in the rule-book. Somehow, MLB umpires think that this is merely a "guideline" to follow. They think it's their job to interpret the rules as they want to that night. I can't stand it. Why have rule-books?

I am making my own strike zone. Only balls throw behind me, and above my shoulders will be strikes.

Thanks for following me on that complete random, meaningless rant about nothing.