Bill Simmons on Twitter: "Scott Foster is dedicating the 2016 playoffs to Joey Crawford."
Posted May 10, 2016, 4:19 AM UTC
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The missed call bad (Lillard got hammered on the other end right after this with no call) but you can't get up in a refs face like that. The ejection was warranted.
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Right? And it's not like Livingston looked shocked when Foster gave him the second T. He had to know that calling the ref a motherfucker a few seconds after getting a technical put him at a pretty high risk of getting another one
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I feel like there has to be some kind of bad blood there. Refs always miss calls. But Livingston, an otherwise mild-mannered player, was pissed.
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because he got fucking hammered 2 feet from foster's face.
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That doesn't give him an excuse to get into a refs face and yell at him, receive a tech, then call him a motherfucker. How can you possibly be surprised your getting ejected.
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I've said it a few times in other comments, he was pissed because if you watched the second quarter, Foster was calling every ticky tack bullshit call possible. Then he somehow missed that
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Yeah he earned it
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Plus, he gave him the first T....started to walk away and let the T sit...but Shaun's stupid ass couldn't let it go and earned his ejection.
And blaming Scott for the missed call solely himself when 2 other refs are on the floor is fucking stupid.
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Not to mention that Scott Foster was clearly furthest from the play. Tom Washington was sitting right under the basket.
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Tom Washington is also a flaming bag of shit of a ref.
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Similar things have only been called flagrant 1s all season
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I don't think so. First of all Scott Foster is one of the worst refs in the league. Second of all he should have given Livingston a chance to calm down, he threw him out literally two seconds after the first T.
Scott Foster likes to make it the Scott Foster show and the way he officiates, with random calls to "balance" the fouls and completely inconsistent officiating he created the situation in the first place. Shaun Livingston is NOT a player who gets angry at refs or yells at them. Scott Foster created this situation.
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one of the worst refs in the league.
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Joey Crawford
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Tony Brothers
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Danny Crawford
Doesn't even make top 3.
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Joey is a GOOD ref. He may get emotional and be a dick sometimes, but he maintains game control and he's consistent, which is what players really want. What they don't want is inconsistency, like Foster did last night. Some shit were obvious fouls that didn't get called and some non fouls did. That's inconsistency.
Danny Crawford was voted one of the best refs too by players.
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Joey is a GOOD ref.
I disagree. Any ref who gets suspended by the League for personal attacks on a player should not be a ref. Their impartiality is forever in question and we all know Joey has favorites.
Danny Crawford was voted one of the best refs too by players.
Except that his games always become physical slugfests or he starts calling ticky-tacky fouls. It's one extreme or the other. For example, he was reffing the playoff game where Love had his shoulder ripped out by Olynyk of which was the result of Brothers/Crawford losing control of the game.
On the other end, we see Game 3 between CLE/ATL. One of the worst called game I can recall. Multiple fouls missed for both teams or phantom calls in order to compensate. The fouls were also heavily skewed in favor of ATL. Only a never-before-seen shooting performance by the Cavs kept them in that game.
Brothers/Crawford are complete crap. Joey is consistent in calls but is not impartial.
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Joey Crawford is a good ref.
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Joey is not in the league, he retired
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He knew he had to be die for steph to be reborn.
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Livingston knew exactly what he was doing. Kerr would not play Curry, but Curry really wanted to play. Livingston then took his opportunity to get ejected and force Kerr's hand, thus awakening the beast.
#IAmHere #IAmBack
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Let's dispel with the fiction that Shaun Livingston didn't know what he was doing. He knew exactly what he was doing!
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I have a theory Bill reads the comments on here, decides what's hot topic then tweets something controversial to stir shit.
Edit: Thoughts, u/sptguy33?
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Or he is just watching the game.
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Maybe we just aren't that original.
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I'm pretty sure I'm the first fan to complain about the refs
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I mean, the stuff you see here is similar to what you'd see on twitter. I saw nearly identical hot takes on twitter.
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I have a theory
Nice try, Bill.
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So bang on which is pretty much why he's the messiah around these parts.
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I do t get it thought. He's been tweeting nonstop about the western conference playoffs. Meanwhile the Cavs just had the best 4 game 3 pt barrage in basketball history and the man has not said a word. He hates the Cavs so much you'd think we were the lakers
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I wish the Lakers were good enough for him to ignore lol
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Tony Brothers is still the worst ref.
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Worst family of referees ever.
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I don't know if its just me, but anyone ever notice how these refs have names that sound like grade school substitute teachers?
Mr.Foster,
Mr.Brothers,
Mr.Javi
etc
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so... the defining characteristic here is that they have surnames?
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Shit man, you shouldn't have said that, you're gonna be on the list now.
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"Mr. Rhinos"
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Mr. Crawford sounds like a strict ass dean or something
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He's the principal that always has it out for you. "Well well well, EfflictimGT, what a surprise to see you in my office again."
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I can't stand him, but he how'd me up with Wizards (Jordan days) tickets for my 13th birthday so I'm conflicted.
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So Kevin Love wants to be known as a "bad motherfucker" but Scott Foster does not. White people, y'all confuse me.
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the shit post master
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Bill Simmons is the man. He's just enjoying his new found freedom. If you ahven't already, check out the ringer and his podcasts. They're fantastic, even the non basketball ones. A recent one with billionaire start up entrepreneur Chris Sacca is fantastic.
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Sacca podcast was great, but that guy is slightly terrifying, he clearly does not hesitate to do some fucked shit in his free time.
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If you made as much as him wouldn't you do some weird shit in your free time?
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Yeah I get that the guy basically has The One Ring of modern civilization, but I hopefully wouldn't be bribing random strangers into being prop bet subjects for the amusement of my friends and me. Kind of a dark view of other people. And that's just what he brags about on a podcast.
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How is that representing a dark view of other people? He's gambling on how many push-ups they can do and other random shit like that, it's not like he's bribing them into a Saw-like contraption and then betting on if they live or die. It's only dark if you think gambling itself is bad.
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People can say no.
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Oh, Bill..
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Fine, Livingston deserved the foul, but when the refs take over the game it becomes so difficult to watch. It's very obvious they were attempting to set a tone during that stretch of the game.
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What tone? Rewarding flopping off of screens, punishing minor blocking fouls, and allowing head rejections?
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I think it was just personal beef between Livingston and Foster. Not like they necessarily have a history, but Livingston was talking with Foster after a play before the missed foul and from the look on Foster's face it was clear Livingston was pissing him off. Then when Livingston came at him again calling him a motherfucker Foster basically said 'no fuck you' and that was that.
I don't think Foster was trying to set any tone other than he didn't want to be bitched at (whether deservedly or not).
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GSW benefit tremendously off of ref's unwillingness to call games correctly and setting a tone.
Every game I watch of you guys consists of at least 2-3 moving screens per offensive possession then Draymond mauling someone on the defensive end.
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Bad missed call or not, there's no way Livingston actually thought he'd be allowed to remain in the game.
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People need to understand what a terrible ref Scott Foster is.
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They missed so many easy calls, and I think they got like 3 or 4 out of bounds plays wrong.
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Scott Foster is SOOO beautiful for sports betting. Even last night when I ended up losing I could see his hustle and drive. HE TRIED to get the Blazers to win, so I can barely fault him that they didn't. It took an exceptional performance by Steph to stop him, but the desire was there.
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The whole game was terrible on both sides. I've never seen so many illegal screens called.
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thx for the insight bill
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I love Bill, but what is with the obsession with refs? Is it a Boston sports fan thing or what?
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It's a gambling thing. If you are at all into handicapping, ref handicapping is one of the easiest ways to give yourself an edge.
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For someone who doesn't gamble can you explain handicapping? Does it mean the refs are going to a let the favorite win but not cover?
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No it means analyzing how refs call games and using that to guide your picks.
Ex: http://www.nbastuffer.com/referee_stats or http://www.oddsshark.com/nba/referee-handicapping-statistics
Some refs give a lot of homecourt advantage. Some refs actually let the away team win more often than the home team. And obviously some refs call a physical game and other refs call ticky tack fouls.
Also read this for context if you are interested: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/tim-donaghy-gamblings-golden-boy.html
The most interesting part is how he evaluates refs from a personality standpoint.
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http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/16542/tim-donaghys-questionable-punditry
the above is a counterpoint to the tim donaghy thing, he's probably a bit nuts. but at the end of the day, it is definitely true that some refs give advantage to home/away teams, and some refs do have different ideas about contact etc. personality probably is not as big a factor as these things, i think
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Simmons doesn't bet on NBA basketball, as far as I know. And he's trash at handicapping football and other sports. For someone who talks as much about his gambling rules and this angle or that angle, he's not very good at it.
Refereeing evens out over the course of the season a lot more than people realize. There are angles with refs, and very successful bettors that use that information. But it's usually on the point totals rather than the spread.
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It's not just the ejection. The refs have been unbelievably bad all game. To both teams. Just a terrible job.
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All season, not just the game. And the league's lack of transparency makes it infuriating to fans of good basketball
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Yep, only people from Boston ever dislike refs.
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Lol all these salty comments but I think this is hilarious.
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Yo, he def officiating like it though.
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Never change, Bill
He already did, he used to write things that were longer than one sentence.
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Why write about athletes' legacies, when you can just record audio asking J-Bug about legacy over the phone?
We've gotten so many pods lately where Bill interviews extremely rich people who he compares himself to, but all you people do is complain that he doesn't write about sports anymore. When he was merely the Sports Guy writing his little columns and mailbags, he never did awesome stuff like humblebrag about the difficulty of clearing a 2Pac song or compare his ESPN exit to billionaire investor Chris Sacca's experience on Shark Tank.
Before I get back to defending Bill's refusal to write and the great decisions he's made lately, you need to know about Stamps.com. Stamps.com means you never have to go to the post office again! With Stamps.com you don't even need to go to work anymore. You can just mail it in from home with Stamps.com. You can mail it in whenever you want, without even putting on pants or shaving. You don't even need to try with Stamps.com! Because Stamps.com is a strong brand, and they've built that brand up to a point that trying is irrelevant. Just keep building the brand through repetition and watch the momentum roll on. Stamps.com, mailing it in like never before.
Or you know, maybe he's busy building a company with lots of other writers and podcast/TV personalities. The guy had a lot of other people to handle management type stuff for him before. Probably one of the luxuries of being at a high company like espn. Now he actually has to do a lot of shit himself.
This is a masterpiece.
Oh god I could hear the song playing in my head when I read the stamps.com bit
Tate, Kyrie went to Duke what do you think about that?
Wait when did this turn into a Joe Rogan Experience podcast
But where can I find tickets to sporting events? Everywhere I look, the price I pay at checkout is way higher than the price they initially advertise! And I often have no idea where exactly in the stadium/arena the seats are.
This is a great response.
So on point
Yea... His podcasts are fucking embarrassingly bad man. It always comes back to Boston sports too
My guess is it's a lack of material. When he was younger, he was closer to being a sports bum. Watch a ton of games all day, shoot the shit with your friends about it. You come up with tons of ideas and opinions.
Now he's in the midst of starting up another website, figuring out staffing, trying to get things working with HBO... dude doesn't have any time to watch shit. Every now and then he gets a free hour to do a podcast, which is mostly off-the-cuff.
I bet he could write some kickass columns right now about TV/media/start ups. He's got a ton of material/recent experiences there. But the man has been too damn 'responsible' lately to consume hours and hours of sports every day, so he can't really write much more than a tweet here or there.
I wish him luck, it's gotta be near impossible staying creative for so long. And did I mention he's helping raise a family as well? Mad props.
He should do Tim Ferris podcast.
Talking is easier and faster
I imagine he has discovered that also really loves running his own company, producing podcasts, doing TV, etc
He's been busting his ass starting and running a business, starting and running a podcast network, and starting and running a talk show.
Between that, wanting to be with his kids, keeping his Rolodex up, and consuming all the content he needs to do his jobs (sports, TV, etc.)... I think we can give him a break.