Speaker 1: So did you guys see Fred van Fleet go after
Speaker 1: Ben Taylor the referee and say he was trash. If
Speaker 1: you haven't heard it, haven't seen it, definitely go find it.
Speaker 1: It's a little old for me to play here. Actually,
Speaker 1: let's do it for those who have missed it. Let's
Speaker 1: start there.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't mind, I'll take a fine, I
Speaker 2: don't really care. I thought, you know, Ben Taylor was
Speaker 2: fucking terrible tonight. I thought that most nights, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple other you know, out of the three, there's
Speaker 2: one or two that just fucked the game up, you know,
Speaker 2: And it's been like that a couple couple of games
Speaker 2: in a row. Denver was tough. Obviously, you come out tonight,
Speaker 2: you're competing pretty hard. At the third quarter, I get
Speaker 2: a bullshit tech change. The whole dynamic of the game,
Speaker 2: changed the whole flow of the game. And you know,
Speaker 2: most of the rest are trying hard. I like a
Speaker 2: lot of the rest are trying hard. They're pretty fair,
Speaker 2: they communicate well, and then you got the other ones
Speaker 2: who just want to be Dix and just kind of
Speaker 2: fucks the game up. Nobody's coming to see that shit.
Speaker 2: They come to see the.
Speaker 1: Players nobody is coming to see that shit. And let's
Speaker 1: face it, Fred van Fleet has a reason to be mad.
Speaker 1: He's had eight technical fouls called against him across seven games.
Speaker 1: Five of those fouls were in games officiated by Ben Taylor.
Speaker 1: His double technical foul game against the Pelicans was also
Speaker 1: officiated by Ben Taylor, so two thirds of his text
Speaker 1: came at the hands of Ben Taylor. Nothing to see here, right,
Speaker 1: It's like totally ordinary, that's normal. Well, Luca don't Chich
Speaker 1: has fifteen texts this year, twice as many almost as
Speaker 1: Fred van Fleet, but no one, no individual raff has
Speaker 1: called more than two on Luca. Doesn't it seem a
Speaker 1: little suspicious? Seems a little suss. Fred van Fleet was
Speaker 1: fined thirty thousand dollars for those comments, which is twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars the most people thought. Twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: is the automatic fine for anyone who criticizes or even
Speaker 1: intimates that there is a referee issue for the purity
Speaker 1: of the game. I am sure, but this has raised
Speaker 1: now awareness on bad referee. In fact, I think Fred
Speaker 1: van Fleet might have started a revolution. Aaron ben Rose
Speaker 1: tweeted a lot of highly paid players in the NBA
Speaker 1: are going to willingly contribute to a lot of NBA
Speaker 1: charities now that Van Fleet has showed them the way.
Speaker 1: The latest is Marcus Smart. Marcus Smart also believes that
Speaker 1: the refs are targeting players that they don't like. Smart
Speaker 1: was asked that there was an explanation for why he's
Speaker 1: been in so much foul trouble. He laughed and said,
Speaker 1: I don't know. If you guys saw Fred van Fleet's interview,
Speaker 1: that's all I'm gonna say that. Lets you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not speaking out of my butt. I'm gonna let Fred
Speaker 1: do all the talking. But we know Marcus Smart, right,
Speaker 1: He's not gonna stay even when he says he's gonna
Speaker 1: stay silent. He continued by saying this, in my nine years,
Speaker 1: I have definitely have had that where I feel that
Speaker 1: officials have a personal vendetta and numerous too. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: feel like they're gonna get the emotions get the best
Speaker 1: of them and make calls and judgment calls the way
Speaker 1: that they officiate it happens. Do refs have personal vendettas?
Speaker 1: You think? Yeah, I mean, those are human beings and
Speaker 1: you see the same people. It's it's like working in
Speaker 1: the same office as someone you see him every now
Speaker 1: and again, you get the chance to give him the
Speaker 1: shift back, and you do. The most famous case, of course,
Speaker 1: is Scott Foster, who I think has at one point
Speaker 1: ref fourteen straight playoff losses for Chris Paul. Do you
Speaker 1: guys remember that stat He was zero to fourteen when
Speaker 1: Scott Foster was refereeing in the playoffs, which is statistically
Speaker 1: almost impossible considering Chris Paul has a playoff record that
Speaker 1: is seventy two and seventy. The NBA, of course, does
Speaker 1: not think that refs have vendettas because it's the NBA,
Speaker 1: and why would they say anything else. Former ref MONI
Speaker 1: McCutcheon twenty five years on the hardwood. He's now the
Speaker 1: VP of Referee Development and Training. This is what he said.
Speaker 1: We have an entire basketball strategy and analytics teams that
Speaker 1: grades referees, and when we see commentary like Van Fleetz,
Speaker 1: we go into analysis, analysis on referee and on referee
Speaker 1: player relationships. Something like this comes up and we flat
Speaker 1: out see whether there is bias or not. And in
Speaker 1: my five years as VP of Referee Development and Training,
Speaker 1: we have not found such bias in a single instance.
Speaker 1: I mean, does McCutchen know that Tim donaghy was in
Speaker 1: the league for twenty five years without a flag one
Speaker 1: red flag being raised? No bias at all, though, right, none? Zero,
Speaker 1: And it's not like it's in their best at interest
Speaker 1: to advertise bad refereeing. This is why they don't make
Speaker 1: referees available for comments after games, because they probably show
Speaker 1: their ass and say something dumb about Fred van Fleet
Speaker 1: and why he was tecked up. This is why Anthony
Speaker 1: Davis said, I guarantee that if ref started getting fined
Speaker 1: for missing calls, they would be better. Julius Randall said
Speaker 1: bluntly after a loss to the Clippers that the ref sucked.
Speaker 1: All you gotta do is watch the game. When a
Speaker 1: reporter followed up and said, oh, the refs have a
Speaker 1: no blood, no foul approach, Randal replied, oh, there was
Speaker 1: fucking blood. Booh. I think we're all kind of tired
Speaker 1: of this. We are this is the referee problem. We
Speaker 1: know there's a referee problem. I think this year is
Speaker 1: maybe the worst it's ever been. When Scottie Barnes got
Speaker 1: that technical foul for the night before for saying something
Speaker 1: under his breath about the game being cheated and then
Speaker 1: not only did you not have the technical foul under
Speaker 1: his belt at that point, the one tech got him
Speaker 1: ejected with one minute left to go in the game,
Speaker 1: and of course that was Scott Fosters asked, you have
Speaker 1: to say, maybe these players have a point. Fred van Fleet,
Speaker 1: to me, seems like the last person to start this.
Speaker 1: He does not seem like someone who is finding reasons
Speaker 1: to dislike refs and cuss out refs. In a contract year,
Speaker 1: Raptors beat reporter Michael Grange explained that it took months
Speaker 1: of anger for Fred van Fleet to boil over. This
Speaker 1: is what Michael Grange wrote. Turns out Van Fleet was correct.
Speaker 1: Taylor was on the job in five of the eight
Speaker 1: games the Raptors point guard was teed up and for
Speaker 1: his only career ejection. Put another way, Taylor has drawn
Speaker 1: the Raptors six times this season, and Van Fleet has
Speaker 1: gotten five technicals and has been kicked out once in
Speaker 1: those six times. In van Fleet's other forty nine games,
Speaker 1: he's gotten three technicals and no ejections, which for van
Speaker 1: Fleet is all the proof he needs that something is
Speaker 1: going on the floor is not level. The sense of
Speaker 1: fairness is not there what's to come with all of this.
Speaker 1: One thing is for sure, people are going to be
Speaker 1: looking at a lot more carefully at referee match ups
Speaker 1: in the coming months, just in time for another Scott
Speaker 1: Foster Chris Paul playoff game.