I had fun watching the Green Chevrolet All-Star game Friday night at the Bowl, and I posted videos of what I thought were the best plays from the game (more to come).

One of those plays came late in the game when Perry Bonds got trapped at halfcourt and threw the ball off an opponent and out of bounds, giving his team the ball back. Terrific play. Smart play. Only it looked like his foot landed in the backcourt before he got rid of the ball.

Whether it was a backcourt violation is beside the point. The point is that it “looked like” one on videotape.

Videotape is completely unfair to officials, but at the same time, it reaffirms the fact that area basketball referees did a pretty good job overall this season. I posted lots of plays on our Web site this year where I thought the call could have gone the other way. But in most cases, it’s hard to tell, even in slow motion. If you can’t tell if a call is right or wrong when you’re watching it over and over again in slow motion, I think that means the referee probably made the right decision on the court.

One of the strangest calls I saw this year was during the game when Waverly’s Devyn Morgan injured his knee. After Morgan went down as he drove for a basket, several people in the crowd howled at the referees for not keeping the game from getting so physical. Pawnee was called for a foul on the play. That’s the strange part. As the videotape showed — clearly, this time — the Pawnee defender never got without 2 feet of Morgan. By the way, even though he couldn’t play, it was great to see Morgan moving around under his own power Friday night. It’s been a long time since I saw an injury on a basketball court that was quite that scary.

But back to my point. Of all the games I watched this year, I saw only one where one missed call could have cost a team the game (and it’s probably not the one you’re thinking about). Even the game where Jacksonville hit what “looked like” a three-pointer at the buzzer that was called a two, I had to watch the tape at least 10 times, in slow motion, before coming to the conclusion that maybe — MAYBE — the player’s foot was really behind the arc when he took the shot.

The officials had only one chance to look at the play.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.