Everyone in every league imaginable complains about the officiating.
However, Lakers head coach JJ Redick seems to have had enough after the team’s most recent game against the Clippers.
There were many
moments in that game where Kawhi Leonard and James Harden got a very kind whistle. Bumps were shrugged off, players plowed through others and the whistle was absent. When the Lakers tried to defend the Clippers’ jumpers, it seemed that if a call could be made, it was.
This made Redick, who always wears his heart on his sleeve, visibly furious.
After the loss, Redick didn’t give a corporate response regarding the officiating. He made it clear that this problem has been around for a while now, and something needs to be done about it.
“The consistency needs to be addressed,” Redick said. “That needs to be addressed and it will be. I think if any coach, any player, what we ask for is consistency. That’s not to single any official out or any crew out. It’s not about that. We need to know what it is night to night. This is where I get frustrated a little bit and I keep asking the league to please reach out to me and respond to every time I do the coach’s feedback thing.
“I don’t get any response from the league. Nobody ever reaches out to me. The way we do challenges and the definition of challenges and the definitions x, y or z and why you can or can’t, it’s different with every crew. We’re supposed to have the guy at the replay center, whoever’s in charge that night, we’re supposed to have some level of consistency and the definitions get changed every night.”
Redick not getting feedback back from the NBA is wild. Obviously, the league has a lot of work to do, but someone should be responding to a head coach’s inquiry about calls and challenges. Hopefully, by bringing it out to the public, it forces the NBA to respond.
The Lakers have already had missed calls late in games go against them. While it hasn’t resulted in a loss that shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t take a disaster for these issues to be cleaned up and talked about.
Redick is far from the only NBA coach to complain about officiating, even this week.
Wolves head coach Chris Finch went off on a ref during his team’s win against the Thunder. He was ejected and fined $35,000 for the outburst.
If similar issues keep happening in Lakers games, Redick will be in the same situation very soon.
Marcus Smart has already been in this situation. He was fined $35,000 for making an “obscene gesture toward a game official” during the Lakers’ game against the Jazz. Now, in LA’s next game, officiating was once again a problem.
Smart spoke about the officiating and what he wants to see moving forward.
“It’s just the consistency,” Smart said. “We understand that no one – not us, not the officials – are perfect. We don’t expect them to be. We just expect consistency and that’s it. That’s the biggest part for any player in this league when you’re talking about officiating is consistency because we understand they can’t see everything. They are human. But it’s the consistent ones where you’re telling you don’t this one on this end but the exact same play, you in the exact same spot and you see it on that end, it’s just like all we want is consistency.”
One thing every NBA player and coach talks about with officiating is consistency. If the calls go both ways, then they can adjust. When a certain contest is a foul on one side and not on the other, that’s when anger starts to happen.
Besides consistency, communication is also important. Obviously, players can be antagonistic, but when they are trying to understand a call, it’s also so they can avoid it later on in the game. If refs are making calls and refusing to explain them during the game, it only makes things worse.
Smart mentioned this as a frustration he had in Utah and then against the Clippers as well.
“You can’t talk to him,” Smart said. “It’s funny because even in the Utah game, I went up at the beginning of the game to be a captain. The captain should be able to come talk to them. They still don’t want to hear it. Control what you can control. They don’t want to talk, you try and you move on.
“It definitely is frustrating when you pour your heart into this game and the feedback is literally waving you off, telling you to get out your face and then giving you a tech because you’re asking a question. Hopefully, they can get it together but it’s definitely something that, as a whole, we are, as players, frustrated with.”
Players and coaches will always complain about officials, but things can be better. Communication, consistency, and, you know, getting the calls right need to happen.
The NBA is the best league in the world and the refereeing needs to reflect that. Currently, they are falling short, and the lack of communication is only making it worse.
No one wants to see a Redick crashout lead to an ejection, but he’s had enough and if things don’t get better, then it’s a matter of when, not if, it will happen.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.
