Sue the refs!

Here in America, we are entitled to a lot of things.  Freedom of speech, the right to bear arms (no matter how many school children get blown away), and the ability to complain there’s nothing to watch on TV no matter how many cable channels and streaming services we pay for.

But you know what we are not entitled to?  Error-free officiating in any sport.  I mention this only because there have been threats of lawsuits over the latest example of officiating malfeasance, namely the waiving off a basket by James Harden despite visual proof that the ball, in fact, did go through the basket after Mr. Harden dunked the ball.

The mistake is somewhat understandable due to some weird physics where the basketball, after going through the basket, somehow got pushed back up through the basket by the net, making it appear to the naked eye to be a miss.  However, if you watch on instant replay it is immediately obvious that the ball went far enough through the hoop to be called a basket.  Under NBA rules, the net cannot act as a sixth man on defense.

Compounding the error is the fact that, even though Rocket’s coach Mike D’Antoni immediately complained about the call, the referees determined that he did not say the exact words, “I am challenging this on replay,” within 30 seconds and therefore no replay was available, even though challenging calls with replay has been a thing for some time and clearly D’Antoni had expressed dissatisfaction with the call.

The Rockets' position, now that the world has seen the replay and conceded that an error was made, is that either a) they should be given the win even though they lost the game in double overtime, or b) at the least they should replay the game since the point of the error, with a little over seven and a half minutes left in the fourth period.  Naturally, fans have threatened lawsuits.

New Orleans fans sued after NFL refs blew an obvious pass interference call in last year’s playoffs, a call so egregiously wrong the league instituted a challenge system for non-calls (a system, it should be said, that has resulted in almost no reversed calls because the referee’s union apparently refuses to allow their brethren look bad by actually reversing a call). The United States being a litigious society, there are lawsuits after every serious example of referee or umpire incompetence.

The problem is this—no major (or minor) sports league in America has ever made a legally binding promise that all officiating shall be 100% error free.  It never happened.  Naturally leagues have an incentive to make officiating as accurate as possible, but no one has ever GUARANTEED such a result.  The leagues owe you, the fans, nothing.  They owe the teams in the league nothing.  Maybe they owe a duty of due process, that they will scrutinize officiating for instances of cheating, favoritism, or blatant incompetence (like a referee who thinks it is perfectly legal for Lebron James to stop dribbling and then start again).  But no one guarantees 100% accuracy.

Which is reasonable, first of all because it is an impossible standard to meet.  Even with replay the result of some plays are inherently inscrutable.  Who at the bottom of a dogpile actually recovered a fumble?  Did a player leaping over a fence catch the ball or pick it up off the ground?  Photographic evidence will never be conclusive in all instances.

Secondly, there are policy reasons to make 100% accuracy a secondary consideration.  Maybe it would be nice to know who recovered a fumble, but you can’t stop the game and have lawyers for each team depose all the players on a dogpile.  You can require the pivot man on a double play to touch second base, but doing so puts the fielder and the base runner at risk, hence the existence of “the neighborhood play” where his foot merely has to be in the vicinity of the base.  Accuracy is an important factor, but it isn’t the only thing to consider.

So, Saints fans, you got hosed; sorry.  Rockets fans, oops but refs are only human, and as the saying goes, to err is human. 

And for those of you advocating for robot umps, even they can make mistakes; after all, they are programmed by humans.