Almost every other day, there’s a controversy around officiating in the NBA. Players and coaches have been highly vocal about wrong calls in the game, but the NBA has not taken action against the officials despite some blatant mistakes. The recent victim of poor officiating is Los Angeles Lakers veteran LeBron James.

The Lakers faced the Bucks in Los Angeles on Friday night, and the visitors emerged victorious courtesy of a couple of decisive plays against LeBron. With 40 seconds left on the clock, LeBron decided to drive to the rim, but Giannis appeared from behind and came up with a timely block and pinned the ball against the backboard. Later, Giannis also forced James into a turnover, which ultimately led to the Bucks’ win.

After the game, LeBron uploaded a story on his Instagram handle with an image of Giannis’ block. The photo clearly shows that LeBron James was fouled, not by Giannis, but by Myles Turner as he got Bron’s arm.

However, it was a no-call, and the Bucks won the game. Hence, the 41-year-old uploaded the image with a facepalm emoji to share his frustration. This gave Lakers fans flashbacks to the infamous game against the Boston Celtics in January 2023, where a clear foul by Jayson Tatum on James wasn’t called by the officials. The Celtics went on to win the game.

Coming back to the Friday night game, one of the officials was Brian Forte. He is the same NBA referee who admitted to missing the goaltending call in the recent game between the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Clippers. Following Steve Kerr’s ejection and numerous no-calls, Warriors star Draymond Green had some harsh words on his podcast.

Draymond Green wants Adam Silver to fire NBA referees over blatant wrong calls

The game between the Warriors and the Clippers was extremely heated as Steve Kerr got ejected from the Warriors’ bench following his frustration with the referees over two calls. The first one was a goaltending violation on a blocked layup by John Collins, which was not called.

The second one was a missed call on a Steph Curry floater. Later, the game’s crew chief, Brian Forte, accepted the goaltending error but felt the second call around Curry’s floater was right.

Once the dust settled on the game, Draymond Green called out NBA referees in general and also asked NBA commissioner Adam Silver to take some drastic steps over wrong calls from the officials in his podcast.

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He was extremely frustrated, as coaches and players are required to pay a fine for every technical foul they receive, whereas NBA officials have all the protection in the world, even when they make wrong calls.

“These things cost you real money. And when people are blatantly wrong, I’m not allowed to be blatantly wrong because ultimately, if I’m blatantly wrong over and over and over again in my job, I’m going to lose my job. But I haven’t really seen many officials lose their jobs,” he said on The Draymond Green Show.

Several teams, coaches, and players have openly spoken out against NBA referees for the quality of officiating in games.

While it is understandable that referees are human and it is not always easy to make the right calls when the game is played at such high intensity, it is also true that the number of incorrect calls is gradually increasing. There’s no consistency among referees in their calls.

Firing someone is definitely not an option, but there needs to be more open dialogue on the improvement of NBA referees.