NBA Column Final Draft

Next time you are watching an NBA game, notice the leniency in officiating. I want you to send an email to Commissioner David Stern complaining of the bad officiating so maybe we can have a tighter, cleaner game of basketball. With continuation fouls that last over five seconds and five steps with no-calls on travels that even a 4-year-old can spot, these referees need to learn the rules of basketball again and start controlling the game.
While less avid basketball fans might enjoy run and gun basketball with non-stop action, the real basketball fans like a game that is fast-paced, but also totally in control. If a game gets out of hand, the referees should be there to settle the players down. While this does happen in the NBA, if happens less often than in college and even the high school basketball that I have seen. Some other problems that are bothersome in the NBA are continuation fouls. These are the fouls that are committed in the act of shooting (supposedly). In any one NBA game, there is at least one play were a player gets fouled, and then decides to shoot. By rule, a foul is considered continuation if the player is in the act of shooting. What is happening now is players are getting fouled and then making a move to the basket. Oddly enough, most of these continuation fouls happen with a travel in between, which is a big problem in the NBA.
If you ever watch a college basketball game and compare it to an NBA game, you will notice that there is a much more assertive presence by the officials in. I am not sure what changes occur in the jump from college to the NBA that makes it harder for officials to enforce the rules, but refs need to get more training and learn to stand up to star players. The NBA has become a beauty pageant instead of a showcase of the best athletes in the world because officials let players run rampant.
I was watching a Cleveland Cavaliers NBA game recently and in the waning moments of the fourth quarter, guard LeBron James performed a travel, or as he explained a “crab dribble”, took five steps, and hit a layup with the foul. The referees then called the travel on James and did not count the basket. In the press conference after the game when asked about the travel, James stated that he performed this “crab dribble” and there was no travel. Even if the ref got the right call, all refs should be blamed for not establishing their ground and standing up to these players. There are far more bad calls made then good calls, and this makes for unexciting basketball. In this struggling economy, unexciting basketball is not the way to go.
With traveling calls, there are too many plays when a player somehow gets from the three point arch all the way to the basket without dribbling. Given, these players are tall and have longer legs, but only two steps are allowed going to the basket, and players are taking three or four short steps around people while holding on to the basketball. From my living room I can make more accurate calls than some of the officials, and they are less than 20 feet away from the action. It says clearly in the rule book:
A player who receives the ball while he is progressing or upon completion of a dribble, may use a two-count rhythm in coming to a stop, passing or shooting the ball.

This rule comes from rule 10 section 8 of the NBA rulebook.
This basically says that you cannot have more than two counts or two dribbles unless you commit a travel.
This traveling problem only seems to surface in the NBA, so it goes back to question of what are the differences between college and the NBA. What are college officials doing right that NBA officials are lacking? I will give you a hint. Training and presence make a good referee, and if people complain enough to Commissioner Stern, I guarantee you that this problem will be fixed.