Forgive The Umpire!

Here's a question to start arguments among sports fans:  Which sport has the worst officials? 

In terms of sheer number of mistakes, it would have to be baseball, but that's hardly fair since the umpires have to make far more calls than the officials of any other sport. 

It's easy to criticize hockey refs, but the fact is everyone in the sport wants the rules to be only sort-of enforced.  The officials (at least in the NHL) call the game the way people want it called, so branding them ineffectual is like criticizing pro wrestling referees.

Soccer is something similar.  It's a terribly officiated game; between missing fouls and fall for dives, the referee might as well be a magic eight-ball.  But we are talking about one guy looking for illegal activity amongst 22 people spread over nearly two acres.  It's an unreasonable task, but the world's religious affection for the sport prevents anyone from acknowledging it.

Football officials make mistakes, as San Francisco fans have been claiming since that fouth-and-goal play at the end of the Superbowl.  But after seeing the fill-in refs at the start of this season, no one else will be joining Niners fans in their complaints.

What I'm getting at is this: basketball has the worst officials of any sport.  And if you knew me to be a fan of the Toronto Raptors, you had probably long since guessed that as the purpose for this discussion.  This year the Raps have been on the short end of several bad calls by the officials, several costing them games, and a couple even resulting in apologies from the league. 

I don't want to turn this into a rant that the league is against Canadians.  Well, to be honest, I'd love to turn it into a rant that the league is against Canadians; I just don't think it would be credible.  What I think is really happening here is an extreme demonstration of the NBA officials' well-known bias to better teams and players.  This year's Raptors are in an unusual position: after a terrible 4-19 start, they've been 14-13 since then, for an overall record of 18-32.  In other words, they're playing reasonably well, but have the record of a bottom-dweller.  That's my theory, that a team that looks to most of the world like a league doormat - but is actually competitive in most of the games they play - is exactly what will best expose the official's favouritism of the league's elite.