Last night, in my post about the NBA Finals, I asked the questions, “Are officials worse now than they were ten years ago? Or do players and funs just bitch more?” And I knew at the time that it was a bigger question that deserved its own discussion, and again, I didn’t want to rain on the Heat’s parade. So I figured we’d get back around to it later. A couple of commenters made good points…

The officiating is the same as it was 10 years ago. The difference is now that the losing fans have more of a voice (via blogs, talk radio, message boards, etc) to be heard after the game. And since the majority of the fans can’t point at their own team, the obvious choice of their ire is the officiating.

– Mondesi’s House

mjd…the answer is clearly the latter. It’s going to get worse too. The fact of the matter is that with commentators ripping on refs, sportscasters ripping on refs, fans ripping on refs…the propaganda machine is unstoppable. You don’t even need any evidence anymore. If a coach or an owner doesn’t feel like being accountable for a loss, all they need to is blame the refs and people will hop on the bandwagon.

– jerloma

Good points there. And there were more, but… space is limited. I can’t quote them all. Sorry.

And two things I don’t want to do are 1) pretend that bad calls don’t exist, or 2) put all of the blame here on Mavs or Mavs fans. The discussion isn’t solely about the Mavs, and I do believe that Seahawks fans set the gold standard on that one (and continue to do so). Mark Cuban, Avery Johnson, and Dirk Nowitzki were all adequately concilliatory in defeat, much unlike Mike Holmgren. I don’t think the ‘Hawks will ever be topped… I seriously fucking hope not, anyway.

And, as I said, it’s not pretending that bad calls don’t happen. They do. I still believe that the Mavericks were wronged in Game Five, but, as quite a few others have pointed out, the Mavs have been the beneficiary of some other calls in their journey to the Finals.

And the bigger point is that they lost because of their own mistakes. When it came right down to it, the Mavs could not play as well in 4th quarters as they did in 1st and 2nd quarters. If they had, they’d have won the series, and it might be Heat fans right now finding something to bitch about.

My contention is that if a team plays as well as it possibly can and still loses (which is rarely the case), there’s about a 99% chance that it’s because they weren’t good enough, and about 1% chance that their loss was the direct result of an erroneous decision by an official. I just don’t think it happens very often.

And maybe the difference between now and ten years ago is imagined… maybe we just don’t remember the bitching, because it’s not what stands the test of time. And maybe ten years from now, no one will remember the Mavs bitching, and we’ll be asking this same question again.

Or maybe it’s true, and we really are just whinier people. Like the commenters quoted above said… everyone’s got a voice now, and the whiniest voices tend to get heard. Maybe we’re a nation raised on Bill O’Reilly, and CNN’s Crossfire, or whatever. If you don’t like something, bitch… and if you’re wrong, then just bitch louder. The important thing isn’t the content of the discussion, but that we get really loud about it.

And please note that I’m not leaving myself out of this… note the usage of ‘we.’ I’m guilty of it, too. I try to never blame the failures of any of my favorite teams on the officials, though I don’t have a perfect record there. For a recent example, see my treatment of Jorge Larrionda this past weekend on Deadspin (though I would contend that when a ref is suspended for corruption, it opens things up for a whole other line of debate).