Well, we all thought the officiating couldn't get any worse...

…and maybe we were wrong, or maybe we were right.

It looks increasingly like previously fired dudes and D-League refs will be officiating next season’s games, and fans are pining away for Tim Donaghy in disguise. Now, I don’t know what kind of quality of officiating these new guys will bring to the table and I suspect that their call accuracy rate will be lower than the original crew…BUT at least the new guys won’t be such arrogant, pompous, self-important asses. I hope.

Update: The NBA’s president of basketball operations, Joel Litvin, claims this:

“We’re confident that we will pretty quickly be able to identify any referees who we don’t think can perform this job, and likewise we’ll pretty quickly identify those that are the stronger ones and we will schedule those referees the most.”

Typical NBA. The full extent of action it is willing to take to maintain credible officiating is internally “identifying” referees that suck more than others. Sub-par referees must never be removed from games or have their jobs taken away or anything like that. Unless they ask for more money of course.