Submitted by anon, Apr 18, 2007 07:15

Lets hear the cheerleader line - "Go team go, fight, fight, fight"....

At a cancer survivor's funeral "she/he put up a great fight against cancer"...

Fight can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. So when a referee with what ever background can stay in the league for as long as he has, referee'ing as many games as this ref obviously did, he is obviously a guy that is knows what's up, can relate to players (in good times and in bad).

So along comes a multi millionaire marquee player. As a money man, he knows he makes way more than the poor ref. As a role model, he should know way better than to challenge any ref / authority figure. For a true boxing match, arm length, strength, fitness...odds are in Duncan's favor in a huge way. Duncan should have put up and shutup. Stop whining and play ball. "Do you want to fight" - aka - do you want to challenge my authority and see what I can do?" Thats how I see this argument...Duncan, keep yapping and I'll can you."

All this shows other marquee players is: trash talk the refs until they trash talk back - then get the refs fired. The baby marquee get 5 minutes of their salary deducted in terms of a fine-wow-what a deterent....trash talking is out of control in many ways and one way refs have a chance is to seemingly relate to the coaches and players (and owners) is to fight back with similar lingo (lets fire all the players/coaches/owners who use the term "fight"...see what kind of league is left...; marquee's know their position of power - this shows their leverage works; this shows how limited the referee's power is to control a game (if your method of controlling a baby player raises a stir - we'll can you) ; referees now know their place and forces them to second and third guess their gut instinct to kick out a marquee player - don't give that technical or kick that person out - you may get fired. Only escalates things when players and coaches try to get kicked out intentionally...now they have to escalate their methods because ref's may not kick them out without more dramatic attempts...; role models now stand for backtalking - it works - so go for it young one, get the ref fired, trash him, rise to the top ; role models now stand above the law (referees) - no matter how good the ref, if you make him appear bad in a public forum (after years of trash talking under your breath) any ref can be disposed of (this may also escalate to public forums to trash coaches, trainers, etc, etc - just ask T.O. in Dallas if anyone connected to him has made public headlines).

I feel for the ref. He sounds like the fall guy. Running around with high profile whining babies is tough - the athletes can out money you, out trash talk you, out size you, out run you, and now the league has given out the authority for a way to get rid of you. I can just see the refs unemployment benefits get nullified by a grumpy boss / league "dared to challenge a prem-a-donna - no rights to ui".

Give the ref a drink on the house. He deserves it.

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