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