Joey Crawford Is Still A Shit

Well, this was inevitable. We all knew that, at some point during these playoffs, Joey Goddamn Crawford was going to find away to thrust himself into the spotlight and whip up some controversy, because Joey Crawford is the worst.

Down by one with under 30 seconds to play, Kevin Durant prepared to take his second free-throw with the game very much on the line. Just as Durant was about to shoot, Crawford came bounding through the lane, snatched the ball out of Durant's hand, and walked over to the scorer's table to do some berating. Why? Because the arena scoreboard wasn't displaying the proper number of team fouls.

It's not so much that Joey Crawford iced one of the best players in the league with an NBA playoff game on the line—well, OK, it is a little bit that that—it's more that Crawford just couldn't help himself. In Crawford's mind, nothing is more important than ensuring that he, Joey Crawford, is strictly enforcing the rules and regulations of a basketball game. Yes, it's bad when the scoreboard is messed up, but any sane referee would have understood that letting Durant shoot his free-throw uninterrupted was, in that precise moment, more important than the accuracy of the scoreboard. A sane referee would have waited until after Durant's shot to stop play and address the issue.

But Joey Crawford isn't a sane referee, and he never will be. He's always going to be the angry, albino-turtle-without-a-shell looking motherfucker who thinks maintaining his iron grip on the game is more important than the game itself.