More on Refs...

John Hollinger writes the following:

"No, the problem is a more basic one: consistency. If players don't know what a foul is from night to night or quarter to quarter, it's inevitable that they're going to be upset, and equally inevitable that fans are going to start flinging conspiracy theories at the wall to explain what they're seeing. In a perfect world, the words "adjusting to the officiating" would never have to be mentioned.

Whether I've been watching in person or on TV, it's hard not to notice that the overall quality of the officiating is worse than it was, say, four or five years ago, and that the night-to-night consistency has been erratic as well. I'm not sure it has much impact on the league's popularity -- for comparison, soccer refs tend to be horrid, and it's still the most popular sport in the world -- but it definitely has an impact on the game outcomes.

And as the series moves to Denver for Game 6, that's likely to continue. With a tight whistle so clearly favoring the Nuggets and a loose one so obviously giving L.A. an advantage, it seems almost inevitable that the officiating will again be a huge story."

No doubt the media and fans are blowing this up, but it seems that whistle-blowing has suddenly changed from relatively constant to erratic. Who knows. It's fun talking about it though.