There are few things that make my blood boil more than being gaslit. It’s a term people use a lot more these days now that it’s been more clearly defined, and at its core, it’s pretty simple. You witness something with your own two eyes, you experience it in real time, and then somebody turns around and tells you that what you saw was wrong or that you somehow misinterpreted it. In essence, they’re attempting to devalue what you saw or experienced, and in the same breath, dismissing it entirely.
We see it everywhere these days, especially in politics. But I won’t go down that road.
The latest blatant example came courtesy of Adam Silver, who stopped by Pat McAfee’s show yesterday and proceeded to say that NBA “officiating is incredible”.
No sir, it’s not.
There will always be conversations about officiating in the NBA. The game moves too fast. There’s too much physicality and too much happening in real time for officials to catch everything perfectly. Everybody understands that going in, and there’s an accepted level of missed calls or imperfect moments that come with the territory. That’s part of basketball.
When your sport is in the national spotlight during its biggest and most important stretch — the postseason —and one of the dominant talking points becomes whether flopping has become too prevalent, that’s usually a sign things have drifted a little too far. And that’s where the conversation is right now, as made apparent by McAfee posing the question.
The best team in the NBA and the defending champions are a team that leans heavily into embellishment. People who watch the sport night after night see it. They recognize it immediately. And the frustration comes from watching that behavior continue to be rewarded. It doesn’t feel natural. It feels like a team identifying the flaws in an imperfect system and pushing against them every chance they get. And at this point, it feels like they’re pushing it a little too far.
Adam Silver’s response?
“Even as I sit in the stands at games, players may be falling down, players may be reacting to a call. But to me, if they’re not fooling the referees, it’s OK. Players are taught to sell calls these days.”
The what in the name of Vlade Divac’s shoelaces is this shit?
It’s a tone deaf statement. If players aren’t fooling referees, then what exactly are we watching? Are modern NBA players simply so uncoordinated and frail that the slightest bump sends them flailing to the hardwood? Perhaps the NBA should partner with milk and focus on calcium intake.
And why are players “taught to sell calls”, Mr. Commissioner? Seems counterintuitive to the integrity of the game to me. Seems that if players are being taught to take advantage of poor officiating, the root cause is poor officiating. But you just said officiating was “incredible”. I can read it back to you. Did you order the code red?!
Players are taught to sell calls because officials allow themselves to be duped. And rather than acknowledging that referees are being manipulated over and over by blatant embellishment, Adam Silver doubled down. That’s the frustrating part. It undermines the sport. It undermines fan bases across the league. And yeah, it feels like gaslighting.
We watch multiple members of the Oklahoma City Thunder hit the ground over and over in clear and obvious fashion, trying to sell contact and draw whistles, and then we’re told that’s not what’s happening. Come on. At some point it starts feeling like the league is insulting the intelligence of the people watching.
It has come to the point that analysts are tracking the number of times Shai Gilgeuos-Alexander (whom I affectionately now call FTA) falls down on his shots. Per Tom Haberstroh, who is out there doing God’s work, the two-time reigning MVP falls on 17.4% of his shots (through Game 3 of the Western Conference playoffs, counting only the postseason).
“Incredible.”
And no, Oklahoma City isn’t the only team that does it. Every team has a guy or two who leans into embellishment. Look at the NBA Finals-bound New York Knicks. Jalen Brunson has built a reputation for drawing contact and snapping his head back on drives to the rim. I often wonder if he’s playing basketball or galvanizing around the mosh pit while Metallica performs “Creeping Death”.
The difference with OKC is volume. They have so many players doing it that it becomes impossible to ignore. Watching them can feel like watching five Brunsons on the floor at once. One guy flopping around is annoying. An entire team kicking legs out on jumpers, throwing themselves backward on contact, and crumbling to the floor the second they feel any physicality, that’s something else entirely.
From Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to backup big Jaylen Williams, and everyone in between, the embellishment shows up constantly. And it’s embarrassing.
For those of us on the front lines who love this sport and spend so much time covering it, it’s hard to defend. This is the time of year when casual fans show up. The people who haven’t been watching all season. The people who naturally tune into the NBA once the postseason begins.
And when they come to me and ask, “What is this?”, I don’t have a great answer for them. Apparently, neither does Adam Silver.
Silver did go on to say the league plans to use artificial intelligence to assist with officiating. “We’re going to move to a system like [Hawk-Eye],” the gaslighting commissioner stated on The Pat McAfee show. “[Objective] calls will be done by an AI automated system with cameras lined around the court…You won’t have to deal with challenges on those calls.”
And hey, I’m open to that. If it helps speed up challenges and makes the review process cleaner, great. I didn’t think I’d be a fan of the ABS system in Major League Baseball either, and that’s worked out pretty well. It’s quick. It’s efficient. It gets you an answer.
That still doesn’t touch the core issue.
If AI is helping correct calls after the fact, at what point do we address the people responsible for getting the call right in real time? At what point is there accountability? At what point does the league truly live up to the standards it keeps talking about, where players aren’t rewarded for embellishment, for unnatural shooting motions designed to bait a whistle, for flopping all over the floor?
That’s the real issue. That’s what fans are frustrated by. And instead of acknowledging any of that, the commissioner looked at all of us and tried to tell us everything is fine. That’s why this lands the way it does. Because it doesn’t feel like the problem is being addressed. It feels like we’re being told not to believe what we’re watching.
And that’s where the disconnect keeps growing between the league office and the people actually consuming the product. Fans can handle missed calls. Players can handle occasional inconsistency. Basketball is chaotic, and nobody expects perfection.
What wears people down is when an obvious issue becomes impossible to ignore, and the response from the top feels dismissive. The postseason should be about brilliance, shot-making, adjustments, and stars delivering on the biggest stage. Instead, too often the conversation drifts toward whistle hunting and whether contact was exaggerated enough to earn two free throws.
That doesn’t mean the NBA is broken. The game itself is still incredible. It does mean the league owes people a more honest conversation than pretending the product on the floor and the frustration surrounding it somehow aren’t connected.
