Tracy McGrady’s wild, wacky, probably frustrating inaugural season in the CBA continues. On Wednesday, after his team was absolutely robbed of a chance to capture a signature road win at Bayi, T-Mac took to his official Sina Weibo account to vent his frustration. At 11:32 pm, he wrote:
CBA has to do a better job with these officials. My team plays hard every night and the 3 blind mice take it away from us!
And four minutes later:
This bad officiating has to change. No way I’m coming back if the officiating continues to be this errant.
He hasn’t addressed the situation again, but his initial public outburst — however warranted and pretty close to the truth — was enough to get him suspended one game and fined 10,000 yuan ($1,600). According to the official statement, he caused “adverse social impact.”
The much harsher punishment, however, was reserved for the referees who oversaw — and caused — the Qingdao-Bayi debacle: the head referee has been suspended 10 games, while his two assistants are suspended five games each.
Meanwhile, Qingdao was fined 100,000 yuan for pulling all its players and staff from the court with 28 seconds to go. One of its employees, “team leader” Jiang Shiwei, who flipped over the scorer’s table and kicked a placard, was fined 30,000 yuan and suspended five games. Here he is again, because this is priceless:
Bayi was fined 20,000 yuan because some of its fans threw debris onto the court.
All told, that’s 160,000 yuan’s worth of fines and 26 games of suspension. The CBA, if nothing else, has expressed it’s serious about holding its employees accountable for the welfare of the league.
The video again of the controversial waning moments of Wednesday’s game:
(H/T CrabDribbles)
Wang Zhizhi should have comforted McGrady by welcoming him to the CBA with a simple statement of “You mad bro?”
Someone is going to have to explain how the rules were violated, I’m afraid I have no idea how basket-the-ball works.