The Crying Game

As a kid who grew up playing soccer, basketball and baseball, I admit that I was often a pretty bad sport.  As a little leaguer I started by complaining about questionable called third strikes, and even now I've been known to give a rec league basketball referee an earful about a no-call on one of my patented out-of-control drives to the basket.  To me, the arguing comes naturally - I'm a verbose person who enjoys a good debate, and I've always been quick to engage an official in "conversation" after witnessing a call I don't agree with.  As I've been watching a ton of NBA basketball this season, however, I'm starting to truly see how annoying all of this bitching and moaning can be from an outsider's perspective.

After watching at least parts of the vast majority of Knicks games this season, I saw a TON of complaining to the officials.  While some of these seemed justified, seeing the same players complain after virtually every whistle eventually became, for lack of a better term, annoying.  When David Lee played for New York, he had a reputation for being a complainer, but I never really noticed it.  This year, however, all of the crying to the officials seemed to be contagious - it started with Tyson Chandler and eventually infected Raymond Felton, Carmelo Anthony, JR Smith and more.  By the playoffs, it was a full-blown outbreak of bitching.  Not only did it lead to numerous technical fouls and transition layups for the opposition, but as a Knicks fan it also became frustrating to watch.

Unfortunately, the complaining isn't contained inside Madison Square Garden.  Last night I watched Miami lose in Indiana to the Pacers and saw Chris Bosh, Ray Allen and even LeBron James whine relentlessly.  The NBA refs have received a lot of (often deserved) criticism over the last few weeks, but there's no way that every call they make could have been wrong.  Watching the reactions, body language and lips of the Heat players, however, you'd have thought that every single call (questionable or otherwise) had gone against them.  If I was rooting for Indiana before the series, I'm even more of a temporary Pacers fan after watching the first four games of the Eastern Conference Finals.  As a fan, watching players complain isn't much fun.

While my rec league basketball games don't have many fans to consider, realizing how annoying all of the complaining is has forced me to reconsider how I act towards referees and umpires.  While I've always had a short fuse and know that the refs are accustomed to it and can handle it, I imagine that my teammates, opponents and spectators find my behavior off-putting, just as I hate watching Chris Bosh whine about every call.  Unfortunately it's taken me almost 30 years to learn this valuable lesson, but I now recognize that, when it comes to crying to the refs, change is better late than never.