{"id":710986,"date":"2026-06-02T19:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/710986\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T19:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:27:09","slug":"nba-announces-finals-referees-by-henry-abbott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/710986\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA announces Finals referees &#8211; by Henry Abbott"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DZFveS4kQ3G\/?img_index=1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBA just announced<\/a> the referees for the NBA Finals. The first instagram comments in response include:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTony brothers should not be allowed in playoffs or finals\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll them are \ud83d\uddd1\ufe0f\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see Scott Foster and Tony Brother there&#8230;. Already tilted\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRef\u2019Mafia!!!!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c2 shots for Brunson\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s going well.<\/p>\n<p>As we <a href=\"https:\/\/www.truehoop.com\/p\/nbpa-no-scott-foster-in-the-finals\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wrote on TrueHoop recently<\/a>, a dozen of the 16 Finals referees received the highest-possible rating from the Players Association in a recent survey of all players. The exceptions are:<\/p>\n<p>Tyler Ford and John Goble were voted in the lowest of the three tiers.<\/p>\n<p>The NBA referee who has called the most Finals games, Scott Foster, ended up in the middle tier, along with alternate Justin Van Dyne.<\/p>\n<p>The Players Association says they shared their findings with the league before the playoffs, along with the recommendation that the league only assign Tier 1 referees to the Finals.<\/p>\n<p>But boy does the league ever love that Scott Foster! Of course he\u2019d get the call \u2026<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s interesting to me, and perhaps this has been written about elsewhere. But this year\u2019s playoffs are missing David Guthrie. Only five officials have called more Finals games than Guthrie. But he was voted into the second tier by the players, and he made headlines for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3ZfzhLGQYPg\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a big botched call at the buzzer<\/a>\u2014which he <a href=\"https:\/\/official.nba.com\/pool-report-on-the-non-call-on-tim-hardaway-jr-s-shot-in-the-final-seconds-of-todays-new-york-at-detroit-game\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">acknowledged was a mistake<\/a>\u2014in last year\u2019s Pistons\/Knicks series. For reasons that I can\u2019t see have been reported anywhere, Guthrie has been absent from this year\u2019s playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you for reading TrueHoop!<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA just announced the referees for the NBA Finals. The first instagram comments in response include: \u201cTony&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-710986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}