Posts by cosmicraven44

James Garcia22 said:And just how many Norway games have you actually sat through besides that one against us if you're gonna claim they're some kind of hooligan squad?

There wasn't any real dirty play or smashing happening when they played us...

I mean, alright, maybe if you're watching it with Bog Sušec doing the commentary...☕

I've seen enough. If you picked up six random girls off the street, they’d probably be handed a two-minute penalty by the 33rd minute—unlike these six thugs. Take Balić, for example—he’d grab the ball, pull a move, cut left or right, and then—BAM. The first defender hits him, the second one puts him on the floor. Then you watch them penalize one of our players, then you rewatch the replay, then you watch the replay from a different angle, then you look at the people around you, and then you go back to the replay. It can happen once, maybe twice, but seeing it this often across so many games isn't a coincidence. I don't recall us ever dealing with officiating this poor.

boldhound8 said:Yeah, right. Like an appeal is actually gonna do us any good. They’ll just hand the gold to the Danes and give it to us instead.🙂 The only thing an appeal gets us is making enemies we don't need...

Dammit, the guys said it themselves—we just weren't good enough. Period. If they had been at their best (rested, ready, etc.), the refs wouldn't have stood a chance of stopping them from taking the gold. So just own it. They owned it back on Sunday, so let's move on.😉
All in all, the officiating was pretty much fair across the board. I don't have anything to complain about regarding the refs. They gave a little to the Danes, took a little from Norway, but overall, we broke even somewhere in the middle.😉

If I recall correctly, a powerhouse squad like Norway picked up their first suspension around the 33rd or 34th minute during their match against the US—a period where our technical specialists were mostly busy absorbing hits and racking up penalties themselves. It was almost comical.

Chris Lopez59 said:And I really need to vent about the officiating. It was just bad. Look, I’m not going to go as far as saying we were robbed—well, except for that ridiculous goal by Cupic from out of bounds, which was honestly a joke—but the overall quality of the refereeing just wasn't up to the standard you expect in a championship game. The criteria seemed to be shifting constantly throughout the match. They weren't calling out the heavy contact when they should have, letting way too much physicality slide, and frankly, that kind of thing is dangerous for the players' health. It's just not good for the sport of the NBA if they let it get that rough.

It is absolutely fair to say we were robbed. In fact, the officiating in our last three games has been blatantly biased against us. We managed to scrape by against Norway and France, and we likely would have escaped here too if the Danes hadn't had that octopus guarding the basket. The Danes were ripe for a second-half collapse; I am certain we would have secured the win if the officiating had been decent. Furthermore, the discrepancy in penalties is staggering when you compare our number of ejections to those of the Norwegians, the Frenchmen, and the Danes. All three of those teams play a bruising, physical style—they break people down—while our guys are constantly patched up on the bench, bruised and bloody. Pero is covered in athletic tape, Balic is wincing every five minutes, and yet, when you tally the ejections, we somehow end up with more than them.😲

The officiating was absolutely disgraceful once again. I honestly find it hard to believe that such subpar refereeing is acceptable for a European Championship final. To be perfectly honest—and I mean this sincerely—it’s becoming genuinely nauseating to watch this sport anymore.

It’s a decent result—we managed to squeeze our way into the semifinals. We definitely caught a lucky break with the draw, along with a few other results falling our way—thank God for small mercies. Facing the Americans will be an uphill battle, but this team always seems to find their stride just when everyone else writes them off. If you ask me, we have about a 35% shot at reaching the finals.