Affirmative Action on the Hardwood

Personal and technical fouls, jump balls and out-of-bounds were getting way too much attention from the referees. The solution, quotas for other calls to make sure players, coaches and fans did not forget about three seconds in the lane, travelling, and carrying (palming the basketball).

Everyone seems to really enjoy the carrying call. Announcers praise the officials for maintaining the sanctity of the game, then look the other way on the next position when someone (inevitably) palms the ball and gets away with it. Like holding (on every play) in football, carrying can be called on just about every possession in basketball. How often is it called? Once or twice a game, often at inopportune times. Three in the key occurs orders of magnitude more times than it is called. Travelling, too, could be called often. It isn't. Another beneficiary of the quota system is the moving (illegal) screen. It's rare that players do not move on screens. Even more rare is a player being called for his infraction.

Essentially, what this amounts to is a lack of consistency by officials. Officials not only are inconsistent from game to game, they're inconsistent within a single game, especially with the calls they make once or twice a game. Theoretically, calling carrying when a player palms the ball is a good call. Unfortunately, if someone on the other team did the same thing two minutes before and got away with it, there's a problem. Right? Either call it right or do away with the token calls, they're just helping screw up games.