Stern, Jackson trade barbs

NBA Commissioner David Stern is not happy with all the criticism the league's officials have been taking lately. Magic coach Stan Van Gundy as well as forward Matt Barnes and Celtics forward Rasheed Wallace were all fined Thursday for comments made criticizing officials. Lakers coach Phil Jackson has been fined twice in the past month for comments critical of officials.

Stern had this to say Thursday: "I wish I had it to do all over again, and starting 20 years ago, I'd be suspending Phil and Pat Riley for all the games they play in the media, because you guys know that our referees go out there and they knock themselves out and do the best job they can. We have coaches who will do whatever it takes to try to work them publicly. What that does is erode fan confidence, and then we get some of the situations that we have. So, our coaches should be quiet because this is a good business that makes them good livings and supports a lot of families, and if they don't like, they should go get a job someplace else."

Stern continued: "It's corrosive. It's corrosive, and because of the pressure cooker that is the NBA Playoffs, over the years I've let it go." He went on to reference a number of shots Pat Riley and Phil Jackson made a couple of decades ago about NBA referees in the Playoffs and continued with comments about Stan Van Gundy taking shots at the officials which he says leads the players to join in as well.

Stern then said " ... if I had it to do again, I would stop it and the price wouldn't be a modest $35,000 fine. It would be whatever a day's pay is and then two days' pay and then a week's pay. And if someone wants to try me the rest of these playoffs, you know, make my day because the game is too important and I don't think the people who trash it are respecting it and what we'll do what we have to do -- to players and coaches alike."

Stern finished off by basically saying the officials only agenda was to work hard to support themselves and their families, etc. and not to help out any particular teams or players.

Van Gundy said prior to Orlando's Game 3 win over Charlotte "I've been fined for saying how good they were this year, and I've been fined for criticizing them, so nobody understands more that we're just not to talk about them at all."

To nobody's surprise, Phil Jackson's ego wouldn't allow him to give a similar response. Jackson first said that he thought one and two games suspensions for comments would be excessively taking away from teams and coaches, calling the threat "awfully heavy-handed." Jackson went on to say yesterday that "(If) there's a natural situation of favoritism on the NBA court, I don't think is going to be deluded into thinking that people don't get calls on the court, regardless of how you say it. It's just a natural evolution of the game and a natural evolution of who gets the ball the most. They're going to end up a lot of times at the foul line. Unfortunately it didn't work for Kobe (Bryant) that way last night, but it did for Kevin (Durant)."

It'll be interesting to see how Stern responds to these latest comments because it's like Jackson is essentially daring Stern to suspend him. I would love to see that happen as I've gotten sick of Jackson's comments about referees. I do think that referees can be biased and that superstars often do get calls they shouldn't as well as supposed bigger name teams and teams that are playing at home. I've said before and I'll say it again that the NBA is the worst officiated of all the pro sports leagues, so I don't think all of Stern's comments have a lot of merit.

I do think that if anybody has a right to complain, it is not Phil Jackson. He had Michael Jordan getting calls all over the place for years in Chicago and has enjoyed similar benefits with Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles. Bryant gets as many or more calls than anybody in the game today. To me Jackson's latest comments are just another example of how he tries to play mind games with the referees and with the opposing teams.