Driving into work today I heard this ridiculous argument on sports talk radio…it took everything in my power to not pick up the phone and go on a Shearn soap box 20-minute rant without a breath.

Here was the stupidity: “You can’t call a foul with .2 seconds left when it will impact the outcome of the game.” Hmm…interesting…so the same foul you call at 10:48 left in the first quarter, can’t be a foul when the game is on the line? So you can basically play rough house with under 10 seconds to go? You can basically pick up a player driving down the lane, throw them off the ropes into a suplex and nothing should be called.

Did you hear that?! That’s the asinine alert going off! Fouls are the problem in the NBA. It’s why college basketball is so much more watchable than the pro game. You have a flow in college. The play is up and down. Sure, there are fouls called in college games, but for the most part the officials let them play.

The NBA on the other hand, is up the floor foul, down the floor foul, up the floor foul, down the floor foul. Don’t breathe on Kobe or LeBron either. If your breath is kickin’ like Bruce Lee, and you breathe in Kobe or LeBron’s general direction, its a foul. You may even get a technical. It’s kind of like when the army jeep hits the Pinto in the movie, “Top Secret.” It barely taps the back bumper and makes a little “ting” noise, and the Pinto explodes. For those of you too young to remember a Pinto, it was a Ford model that was said to blow up in rear end collisions.

ANYWAY! My point is if it’s a foul with 9:37 left in the second quarter, then it should jolly well be a foul with five seconds left in the fourth quarter or double overtime.