Facing the Heat: Why Refs are the Wrong Focus for Miami's Success

The Miami Heat are a day removed from going up 2-1 in their series against the Chicago Bulls, but it has nothing to do with the skill level of the Heat. At least that's what many in my social network would like you to believe.

• "I guess it's the Bulls versus the Heat/refs"
• "The Bulls are playing 5 on 8"
  

Those are a couple of quotes I came across (among many) since the Bulls/Heat series started. It's all the same complaints recycled from the 2011 Eastern Conference Finals, when the Heat downed the Bulls in 5 games to reach the NBA Finals.

Blaming the refs is the easiest and laziest argument that a fan can make. It works as the perfect defense mechanism when your team loses - I saw this first hand when my boys lost the Super Bowl to the Ravens. Many Niners fans put a big chunk of the blame on the striped shirts for not calling a defensive hold against the Ravens on the Niners' last offensive play in the red zone (a fourth down) when San Fran was down by 5 late in the game.

What those fans failed to mention was the thorough beat-down that the Niners got in the first half that put them in a huge hole. They fail to mention the way Jacoby Jones and others tore apart their secondary and special teams units - the match-ups that ultimately failed the Niners. Just like a basketball game, there will be calls that go against an NFL team, even on the highest stage of the game. That doesn't mean that the referees caused the team to lose. The Niners' chances should have never hinged on a judgement call from the zebras - they shot themselves in the foot too often early on to blame officials for a non-call, which didn't even guarantee them a victory (they still would have needed to score a touchdown, which they failed to do on the previous three plays from the same yard line in the red zone).

The same goes for the bitching that many Bulls fans have done when their team loses to the Heat. They'll call Lebron a whiner (they call him much worse than this, but I have to limit my use of the female dog reference to one mention per paragraph). They'll say that the refs have it in for the Heat and want to see them win the title again.

If the NBA was as rigged as everyone would like you to believe, do you really believe there would have been NBA Finals match-ups like the Spurs/Pistons, Spurs/Nets (or Spurs/anyone), Lakers/Magic? The Spurs are one of the least attractive great teams in NBA history (were never good for ratings), yet in the past 10 years have made the Finals three times (winning all three appearances in 2003, 2005, 2007 in addition to their 1999 appearance). Unless you're an NBA junkie or a fan of one of those teams, I doubt you gave serious thought to watching any of the series mentioned above. And the ratings for those series (particularly the Spurs' ones) prove you likely didn't tune in. If it's all about ratings and money, then the rigging theory doesn't make sense in those situations.

The Heat are not winning because of the refs. They're winning because they're a great team - they did go 66-16 in the regular season after all, outscoring their opponents by an average of 8 points per game. They didn't win 27 straight games this year because the striped shirts assisted them. They had that streak because they were dominant on both ends of the ball, outscoring their opponents by a 105-93 margin during their historic streak.

Speaking of history, Lebron had one of the quietest historical seasons in NBA history this year, shooting an unreal 56.5% from the field, 40.5% from three-point territory (both career highs by far), while averaging nearly 27 points, 8 rebounds (career high set this year) & 7 assists per game. He has improved his field goal percentage every season since the 2006-07 season while continuing to maintain his stellar stats across the board in every other category.

The above facts are not the result of the refs handing them wins, but because of amazing talent and a core who's had the chance to gel together for the past 3 years to become the best team in the league.

Yes, there are times when it gets annoying to see Lebron pout when he doesn't get a call, but let's not act like this is a trait exclusive to the Heat. Whenever I watch Noah or Boozer foul a guy, immediate looks of disgust almost always accompany the whistle and the calling of their number for a personal foul. There's probably at least one or two guys on every team in the league that have the "you gotta be kidding me!" look when they get called for a foul. But when it's your guy complaining, Joe Fan, who blindly supports anything the team does, will see the call the same way as the complaining player and completely neglects the hypocritical nature of their complaints. So yeah, the bitching about Lebron pouting seems silly.

And it's funny that of all teams, Bulls fans will complain about the star treatment that Lebron gets when a half NBA generation ago, they were witnesses to Air Jordan, who got his fair share of calls in his favor (his last shot with the Bulls when he pushed off on Byron Russell was the perfect example - if Lebron did that, Bulls fans would scream "Bullshit!")

Your team gets calls too. You're just pretending it doesn't happen.

I'm not saying that the Heat don't get any calls in their favor - they do. But I don't believe they get any more or less calls in their favor than most teams in the league, although many of you reading this might wholeheartedly disagree. It's hard to remove fandom with the judgement of other teams and referees. But to think there's a conspiracy theory every time your team loses to a great team who you think is getting hundreds more favorable calls than your team, that's just your fandom talking. Watch a random game of any sport involving two teams you don't care anything about, and you'll see that the bad calls go both ways and usually balance out in the long run.

And think about how many times your team gets breaks from referees. Oh wait, you can't, because they never make calls in your team's favor. I bet you can name 20 instances of refs being against your team before you can name a situation where a call benefited your team. You're way more likely to remember the times that an external force outside of your players (the refs) supposedly caused your team to lose than you are to remember when the refs may have made a big call in your favor to aid a victory. When your team wins, you attribute your team's win to their immense skill, not because they had a beneficial call or set of calls in a game. When your team loses, it's because the refs screwed them over. You can't have it both ways.

I fully expect the Heat to close this series out - if not in 5 games, then probably 6. And I also fully expect that the refs will be the root blame of the Bulls defeat, not the Heat's players, who have shot 60% & 50% in their past two games against a tough Bulls defense. Even without some defensive stoppers like Deng & Hinrich, the Bulls' defense is still a top-notch unit, making the Heat's hot shooting even more impressive.

Give some credit where credit is due. The Heat are good - damn good. I know you hate them, which is probably another reason why you might say the refs are favoring them. For the next set of games, try going 5 or 10 minutes without saying the word "referee" and instead focus on the players making the plays - I bet you can't.

The Heat will get a call here and there that goes in their favor, but it won't be the reason they win the series. They'll win it because they're better. Simple as that. 

Don't Stress, Young Man

I need to see someone about my sports addiction problem.

There's no reason a human being should get so worked up about any angle of sports where it affects the person even in the slightest.

Don't get me wrong. Sports are a good release from real life, where we have to deal with work, bills, recession stuff, etc. When sports help you forget about those things for a while, no one would argue that as a bad thing. However, there are just some times where I get worked up about certain aspects of sports that make me question why I get so involved in it emotionally.

Gambling

This devil of a thing entered my life at a young age. Around the age of 8 or 9, I was aware of point spreads and wasn't too bad for my age in guessing what a line would be in football. A few years later, I organized a football picking pool with me, my dad and two neighbors on the block to guess the winners straight up every week.

That morphed into the once famous confidence pool that had me and some friends competing for money every week and for end of year prizes by ranking the teams we thought had the best chance of winning every week in descending order. As that dissolved, online gambling became my new outlet. Outside of a few decent cashouts, that has been mostly sewer money.

And who could forget Vegas, the place I will have visited for the 6th time in 3 1/2 years after my June trip is complete. While others get their thrills in Vegas from black jack, poker, clubs and shows, my Dream Vegas is plopping my ass in the sports book after a nice fattening Bellagio breakfast with mimosas. While I've never lost more than a couple hundred while in Vegas, I've never really won much either.

Gambling changes the way I watch sports in that I am often rooting for teams and outcomes that I would not care about otherwise. I will say that I am as objective of a gambler as there is when it comes to judging how an official/referee/umpire may or may not be impacting my bet. Which brings me to the next thing that bothers me about sports....

Blaming the Officials

Going into game 2 of the series between the Heat and the Bulls, I told my friend Tim that I guaranteed that Bulls fans and "fans" would find a way to complain about the referees if the game was close (I said within 10 points) and the Bulls lost.

Sure enough, right on queue, I saw a few items on a social network (hint: it rhymes with Schmace schmook) of a handful of complaints about the refs as the Heat were closing out their 10 point win. I didn't realize referees caused the Bulls to shoot 34 percent from the field and 61% from the free throw line, but I'm glad a few people were out there to remind me that it was the men in the zebra outfits who caused that. Sure as hell beats thinking that, I don't know, your team got outplayed almost as bad as they did to you in the previous game.

Even while completely expecting a few people to blame the refs, it still annoyed me to no end to read some of those comments. I typed out comments and hit the backspace button before sending the comments, for fear of getting in a War of Turds with some of the haters of striped shirts. I knew arguing specific calls that the Bulls got in their favor would do no good, so I resisted and decided that venting about it to the 10 people who read this would be a better outlet.

(Editor's note: I did bet the Heat with 5 people but promise you that I will not blame the refs if the Heat lose this series. Neither team needs the ref's help to win the series.)

So the point of this subsection, I guess, is that if I didn't get so worked up about sports, I wouldn't get worked up about people blaming the refs for crap that their players did or did not do. Even in the small increments that I see this happening, this probably annoys me more than the gambling aspect of sports.

If it weren't for the refs, the Bulls would be 92-0 at this point in the year, well on their way to the first perfect season in NBA history.

That last sentence is probably believed by 5-10% of Bulls fans- which scares the shit out of me.

My teams suck

The teams I have decided to follow in my life - mainly the White Sox and 49ers - aren't exactly for the faint of heart. Combined since 2002 the teams have combined for 2 playoff appearances - White Sox in 2005 and 2008. The World Series championship seems so far away, especially given the lack of follow-up to that season in any of the subsequent seasons despite consistently high expectations year in, year out.

On the other end, the Niners have lowered my expectations during that time, to the point where I thought an 8-8 season in 2009 was "a good season". We've had the luxury of having a healthy rotation of coaches since our last playoff appearance in 2002. We're tried offensive-minded coaches, defensive-minded coaches, coaches who had their fathers successfully coach in the league, coaches who used to be successful players a few decades removed. You name it, we've hired a sucky version of it.

While I consider myself somewhat of a Bulls fans, to be fair to the fans of the team through the thick and thin, I will not speak of them in my fandom. For the most part, I root for the Bulls (that is, when I don't have $110 and 10 pitchers on the line). By no means am I a diehard though.

I wish I was though - because I could really use a winning team in my collection of teams I root for (sigh). Losing is tough to swallow, no matter the sport. If only my teams could play without refs....then we'd probably lose every damn game.

Why?

So why the hell am I so loyal to anything and everything relating to sports, given all these factors that annoy me daily or annually? Why would any person deal with the stressors that sports cause, especially when sports are actually supposed to relieve stress of daily life?

I'd say that the main reason that I will continue to love sports despite the above things is the camaraderie that comes from watching sports with my friends. It is unlike any other social aspect of my life. Getting together with friends to watch a sporting event, regardless of gambling/rooting interest or sport, is a priceless time. Also, if it wasn't for sports, I probably would talk to many of my guy friends a lot less than I do. I certainly don't want to take that out of my life. Throwing a few back, wagering a few bucks and sharing laughs and stories outweighs the bad that some aspects of sports create for me.

I suppose I am fine without a sports psychologist in my life. It's not like I'm gambling more than I can afford to lose, getting heart attacks from sports arguments or losing sleep over my teams sucking ass.

In the meantime, I bet you that the refs will cause the Bulls to lose again and that my White Sox will lift up my hopes and then let me down again.

At least my Niners will miss the playoffs along with 31 other teams if there's no season.

Finally, a victory cigar is in order.