Bill Kennedy doing what he does best
So here is what happened. I came home from work and check the ESPN news and scour the latest basketball news. Kobe Bryant had jury duty, boring. Curry gets his son back from the son’s grandmother, ehh. Doc Rivers fined $25,000 by the NBA, lol.
The interesting part was how espn portrayed the incident. Doc Rivers was irate during a celtics loss. Doc received 2 technical fouls. The 2nd tech was in the final minute of the game. However a single sentence at the bottom of the article hints at the true story, “The league also fined referee Kennedy an undisclosed amount.”
You can’t really blame ESPN though. ESPN is basically forced to remain in the good graces of David Stern and company. You can’t just bite the hand that feeds you. At least they threw in that tidbit for people to think about. I’m sure most people caught on to it. It would have been nice to see some of the comments by Doc though.
Luckily the NBA doesn’t have enough money to influence the rabid fans of Boston.
“The technical on which I got thrown out was the most unprofessional technical by a ref I’ve ever had,” Rivers said. “He stood there and goaded me and goaded me and stared at me.
“Look at the film. I actually walked away. He asked me, ‘Where do you want the ball?’ And I said, ‘Ask them,’ talking about my players. That’s my right to say that, and he walked away.
“He stood there and stared me down and stared me down and goaded me until I turned around and said, ‘What?’ That’s when I got thrown out of the game. In a [5-point] game? Think about that.”
Let’s analyze more. Referee Bill Kennedy must have had an elevated enough amount of emotion in order to act on those emotions, knowing they could very well affect his professional career. Sure, he could have had confidence he wouldn’t be caught but that would signify the amount of power and influence an official has over a game. It’s difficult for me to imagine a ref furthering his career to the NBA level while influencing games all the time which suggests Bill Kennedy knew the risks.
The only reason people take risks such as this, especially when it comes to career risks, is through an extreme amount of emotion. Even though I know the league keeps it’s officiating records locked up tighter than Miley Cyrus err… my wallet in the recession, with google you can find anything.
Yep, thanks to Vegas we can see he has officiated in 73 games. They keep track of Bill Kennedy’s Officiating records.
Searching around the net, RedsArmy is angry, the Fans of boston.com think it’s roid rage, realbostonsportsfans.com thinks Kennedy’s an idiot, basketball-refs.com is thankful.
There is surprisingly very little concern or search results for this issue. Let’s hope that changes.
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March 20th, 2009 at 1:26 am
wow the ref must have been pissed off about something, he put his career in jeopardy!
March 20th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Good evening…if Joe Crawford is a similar case study to this, then Bill Kennedy has no need to be insecure about his career. And yes, once Crawford tossed _two_ Boston coaches out during a Celtics loss with a series of technical fouls within a half minute, the first of those being quite inexplicable, like Doc River’s scenario.
March 20th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
It’s sad but probably true
March 22nd, 2009 at 1:01 am
am i the only person who notices how doc bitches and moans about something after every loss?
March 22nd, 2009 at 1:48 pm
No, I’ve noticed a bit but what I notice more often is that Doc Rivers is often itching and yelling at the refs no matter what the score is!
April 14th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
As you pointed out, we at realbostonsportsfans.com were certainly outraged and think Kennedy is an absolutely idiot. On the heels of the referee scandal we were also shocked at how little play this got. And for the NBA to have fined Doc to save face is an absolute joke.
Nice reporting!